


The Guardians of Samarkand

by Snowgrouse



Series: Of Roses Unfurling [23]
Category: Thief of Bagdad (1940), كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights, كتب الف ليلة و ليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights & Related Fandoms
Genre: Amulets and talismans, Anal Foam, Anal Gaping, Anal Sex, Anal Sex (female receiving), Angst, Animals, Anonymous Sex, Ass to Mouth, Background Femslash, Bandits & Outlaws, Barmakids, Bath Houses, Bathroom Sex, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Brother/Brother Incest, Brotherly Love, Castles, Character(s) of Color, Cheetahs, Childhood Trauma, Chinese Characters, Christian Characters, Clockwork - Freeform, Companionable Snark, Contraceptive magic, Cross-cultural, Crossdressing, Cruising, Crystals, Culture with casual male bisexuality, Cunnilingus, Curvaceous Female Character, Dark Het, Djinni & Genies, Double Penetration, Double Penetration in One Hole, Egalitarian Het Relationship, Empathy, Engineering, Engineers, Erotica, Ethiopian Characters, F/F, F/M, Family Fluff, Fellatio, Flashbacks to childhood rape, Fluff and Angst, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Gangbang, Gay Sex, Gen chapters, Group Sex, Harems, Held Down, Heroine/Villain, Het and Femslash, Het and Slash, Heterosexual Anal Sex (female receiving), Heterosexual Sex, Heterosexual Vaginal Sex, Historical, Historical Erotic Romance, Homosexual Anal Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Incest, Interracial Relationship, Intoxication, Islam, Islamic scripture and lore, Long sex scenes, M/M, Magic, Magic as sex aid, Magic-Users, Magical defense, Manwhore Jaffar, Medieval Islamic Metaphysics, Medieval Medicine, Mental Illness, Middle Ages, Multi, Muslim characters, Mysticism, Mythology - Freeform, Opium, Oral Sex, Orgy, POV Alternating, POV Bisexual Character, PTSD, Pagan Festivals, Pagan characters, Palaces, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Perfume, Period Attitudes Towards Race, Period Attitudes Towards Sexuality and Gender, Period-Typical Racism, Persia, Polyamory, Possession, Power Dynamics, Queer Het, Racial Tensions, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Religious Cults, Religious Discussion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rimming, Romance, SCRYING, Saints, Samarkand, Semi-Public Sex, Sex Robots, Sexual Roleplay, Sibling Incest, Siblings, Simurgh - Freeform, Slavery, Soul Bond, Spiritual, Spiritual sex, Spitroasting, Strong Female Characters, Sufism, Talismanic Magic, Talismans, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, The Golden Age of Islam, The Thousand And One Nights - Freeform, Underage Rape/Non-con, Vaginal Sex, Veidtbone - Freeform, Vikings, Wedded bliss, angsty sex, can be read as a standalone/original fic, child characters, costume porn, dance, gay orgy, heterosexual anal sex, medical drug use, psychopathy, religious ceremonies, spells, the silk road, warriors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-14 23:35:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14779415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: Jaffar and Yassamin's passion-filled holiday at the palace of Afrasiyab is shadowed by what they soon discover is a conspiracy against Jaffar's brother, Mohammad, the sultan of Samarkand. The Barmakid brothers and the women all set out to uncover the plot and to disarm the rebels by any means necessary; magic and seduction their foremost weapons in their battle to protect their beloved city.***"Sit down," Jaffar whispers and smacks Fadl on the arse, taking his own advice on one of the marble benches lining the pool. "You're not exactly  being inconspicuous.""Neither are you," Fadl groans. "You haven't stoppedposingsince we came here!" he grumbles and pokes Jaffar with an elbow as he catches him making eyes at yet another man. "What's gone into you, you madman? Are you inheat?!""Perhaps, brother mine, perhaps," Jaffar purrs and sprawls against the back of the bench. He leans on his elbows and tilts his head against the wall a coquette, letting his freshly-oiled hair tumble onto his neck and shoulders as he lounges there. The length of his legs allows him to spread them in blatant offering, his towel--if you can call it that--of thin white cotton revealing more than it hides.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Versaphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Versaphile/profile) for helping out with brainstorming the plot and mini-betaing bits and bobs here and there.
> 
> Thanks also to [AngelsThornsRoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelsThornsRoses/profile) for nudging me into "creating" Attaf, The Breadbasket Guy :)
> 
> ***
> 
> See [this post](https://snowgrouse.livejournal.com/2569977.html) for a short summary of the Rosesverse story so far, a cast list, and other bits of useful information relating to the story (historical bits and bobs, et cetera).

*** 

_Today is thine to spend, but not to-morrow,_  
_Counting on morrow breedeth naught but sorrow;_  
_Oh! Squander not this breath that heaven hath lent thee,_  
_Nor make too sure another breath to borrow._  


\--Omar Khayyam

*** 

**Afrasiyab**

 **The orchards**

*** 

"Take the date fruit, for example," Jaffar says and gestures at the tall, robust date palms as he and his family stroll through Afrasiyab's vast orchards. "See the way the fruit hangs there in abundant clusters, offered to us, as if whispering 'come, eat!'" he cries, his eyes glittering with awe. "That it should be offered out to us like this, to provide for us, to sustain us... this, children, is what I mean when I speak of Divine Presence. Such are God's signs, proofs of His blessings and His guidance--easily gleaned if you but look at the world with your soul's eyes."

Yassamin sits down on the carpet laid in the shade of the tallest of these trees. As Jaffar and the children sit beside her, she begins to recite in beautiful, mellifluous, old-fashioned Arabic:

 _"It is He who sendeth down rain from the skies and with it, We produce vegetation of all kinds: from some We produce green shoots, out of which We produce grain, heaped up at harvest-time,_ " she intones, gazing up at the rich clusters of dates hanging over their heads and at the heavens beyond, the children turning their eyes up with her as she continues. _"Out of the date palm and its sheaths, clusters of dates hanging low and near: and gardens of grapes, and olives, and pomegranates, each similar, yet different: when they begin to bear fruit, feast your eyes upon the fruit and the ripeness thereof. Behold! In these things there are Signs for people who believe."_

Jaffar raises his eyebrow at her and smiles. _Show-off._ He no longer remembers the Noble Qur'an by heart, whereas Yassamin claims to have memorised it completely at twelve and is always reading it lest she forget. 

She but smiles back at him, about to say something, but little Salsabil speaks first. "I almost remembered the entire thing!" she beams. "I was saying it along with Mother."

"It is a valuable skill," Yassamin says and hands both children dates from the basket she'd been carrying. 

"Yes, well, if you are a judge, or blind," Jaffar says breezily, many hafizes and hafizas having indeed learned the art not only because of the respect it commands, but because it is one of the few occupations open to the blind. Besides, he wants to side with the more sullen Anwar who has not said a word, being far better at practical matters than memorising books word-for-word. "A true spirituality is, however, lived: practiced out here in the world around us. One must step out of one's library sometimes, take one's nose out of books and put one's piety to the test by engaging with the world and one's fellow human beings. I did far too much of the reading when I was younger, wasting some of my best years cooped up in my study!" he sighs, but then smiles and turns his voice into a honeyed croon, leaning towards Yassamin with an amorous grin. "It was only when I looked out into the world and spied a _very_ beautiful princess in my crystal that I realised I was trapped in my chambers, imprisoned by my self-imposed hermitude."

"You still spend far too much time in the shabestan," Yassamin chides him tenderly, nuzzling his face with a smile. 

"Yes, but now you're _with_ me there half the time, and besides, now I know to even worry about whether I've spent too much time there. I've become much better at that, and you know it," he says and kisses her nose, pulling back to address the children once more. "You see, before I discovered your mother, I had no reason to leave my chambers except whenever I absolutely had to, to keep the empire running. But whenever I did come out for state occasions, I was as an automaton: my soul had been left behind in my study. I merely did my work like a machine and went back as soon as I could. But now, I have a proper reason to come out, bring all of myself out into the world: love. And we know, don't we, children, that God is Love, and the life-force, yes? That these are all the one and the same power?" he says, continuing despite Yassamin's suspicous look, she ever vigilant as to his heresies. "Before, I was as dead: yet the moment I saw her, it was as if I had been awakened from a dark sleep, and as if I had a heart again, once she made it beat with such ardent love for her. And so, I went out into the world, bringing my heart and my soul with me, pursuing your mother relentlessly, for I was pursuing Love, Life, the Divine Presence itself--and look what happened! You two happened!" he says and ruffles Anwar's head, making sure not to ruffle Salsabil's neatly pinned cap and veil except with his loving gaze. "Those verses your mother just quoted are talking about the same thing: of remembering that God is not just up there in the heavens," he says and points to the sky, "not just an idea, not just a concept to be contemplated but something to be experienced, lived, loved. Why, He is present within that date Anwar is munching right now!"

Anwar stops chewing and his eyes fly wide; he nearly chokes on the date. Immediately, Yassamin begins to slap his back and rolls her eyes at Jaffar. "God's spirit has _touched_ the date. His power has run through it to make it grow. God is not a date! Children, you shouldn't take all these things your father says too literally."

"And why not?" Jaffar asks breezily. They have had this argument before: that of God's transcendence--the more orthodox view Yassamin ascribes to, at least in public--versus Jaffar's mystical insistence of His absolute immanence, which Yassamin sees as pantheism and therefore dangerous. "It harms no one," he insists. "On the contrary, it makes people more pious when they think of the Presence that way; how can you harm others when you see the Divine Presence in them?"

"But this is not a belief suited to most ordinary people, because one needs to be very intelligent to understand it," Yassamin sighs, busying herself by digging into her basket instead. "That's why we have been told to worship nothing besides God: He has no companions or equals, no spouses or children, because to think of God in those terms would be to just scatter the divine energy everywhere. Monotheism connects us directly with the Divine, with no intercessors, and likewise, the Divine flows back to us as but the one single emanation, one beam of light," she says, lifting her hand with a pinching movement as she addresses the children. "Think of having just the one God as being like one of those crystal lenses your father uses in order to concentrate light: it focuses the sun's rays into one beam, and you can even set straw on fire with it, whereas you can't do the same thing with sunshine, where all the rays are scattered. In short: it's hard to focus on worship, or to even receive blessings, if they're all scattered, the way they are in polytheism, or your father's view. There have perhaps been one or two supremely intelligent pagans who have seen the One God's presence beyond all their idols, knowing it was the same force beyond them all--but were you to tell normal people that God was in everything, they'd begin to worship the wrong things. They'd begin to worship statues, gold, or worse, themselves; and that's when you descend into barbarism. People would do nothing _but_ harm one another, fighting over which one of their false gods was the most powerful!"

Anwar looks at Jaffar, who is now resting back against the palm trunk, sighing. "But Father does not do any of that!"

"That's because your father is a wise man. He _does_ believe in the one God, but people might think he doesn't when he speaks of the world in this manner. If he said that thing about the date to someone else, they might think he was worshipping the date itself, and then he'd be in trouble." 

Salsabil, however, always siding with Jaffar, is not as convinced. " _I_ can see it. That God's in the date. Because if He touched the date and then went away, like Mother says, wouldn't that mean that He _wasn't_ everywhere and that He _wasn't_ all-powerful?" she says, applying the very same logic she has heard theologians use. "Besides, we are not bowing to the date or worshipping it because we're not _stupid!_ We just see how wonderful it is that God is feeding us with it, and that's the exact thing God tells us to notice: the sign that only true believers can see."

"Listen to your daughter," Jaffar grins. "That's what I have been trying to say."

Yassamin lifts her hands to her face, exasperated. "Merciful God! Just, children, whatever you do, don't ever tell your aunt or uncle--or anyone!--that he speaks of such things."

Jaffar but keeps on grinning. "Your mother does not complain this much in private, whenever I contemplate the wonderfulness of God and his Love within her embrace," he says, knowing Yassamin's protestations for what they are--she is indeed far more concerned about her family's appearance of orthodoxy in other people's eyes than anything else. "And I believe she is, in fact, digging around in that basket for some _wine_ to calm her nerves, while calling _me_ impious!"

"I am not, you heretic. It's milk."

"Father, _are_ you a heretic?" Anwar asks, genuinely concerned. Whenever their parents tell him and Salsabil to not talk about certain things in public, they are always dangerous things, they say, things that can harm them. "An unbeliever?"

Jaffar waves his hand. "No matter what you believe in, someone, somewhere will always call you a heretic. Even the pagans cannot agree on what's the right way to worship. Whether to pour milk or yoghurt or butter on their idols; that sort of thing. And that's, as your mother said, how wars start. I wouldn't worry about it too much."

Yassamin pulls out a skin of milk and a cup. "Your father is a very wise man, but also a fool to speak of these things so lightly. One should never speak of complicated, mystical things in public; people will misunderstand." And now, her hands begin to tremble so that she spills the milk a little. " _Promise_ me, my beloved, my _only_ children, that you will not talk to others about these things. We could get in really bad trouble for it, even killed," she says, her voice now wavering, near tears; she hates it how carelessly Jaffar always scatters these little blasphemies about, half-jokingly, seemingly not realising the damage a little child's words might wreak.

"I'm sorry," Jaffar says, taking the milk from Yassamin and offering skin and bowl to the children instead. Now grave, he pulls Yassamin into a tight embrace. "Latifa is a shaykha. She would understand; we've talked to her about these things many a time. And Mohammad has had his share of accusations of unbelief, simply because he is a Barmakid. But before you snap at me, my love, I understand," he says, now leaning his head on hers and looking at the children. "Perhaps it is because I trust the wisdom of these two little sages, even at such a young age. We can trust you, can we not?"

Salsabil lifts both of her hands to her heart. "Absolutely!" she cries. "Is that not so, Anwar?"

"'When asked, just recite from scripture and say nothing more.'" Is that not what you said, Father?" Anwar asks.

"Well, my son... _is_ God in that palm tree?" Jaffar asks with a twinkle in his eye. "In that date you just ate, warming your blood and your limbs right now?"

Anwar frowns, but then his face brightens as he realises his father's intent. _"He produces for you... corn..."_ he recites, his lips moving silently as he brings up the rest of the verse from memory, _"and olives, and date palms! And... grapes, too, and all kinds of other fruit!"_ he looks visibly relieved as he sees the adoring smile on his mother's face; now, he puffs his little chest as he delivers the last sentence with pride. _"Verily, this is a Sign for those who think!"_

All burst into cheers and applaud with their hands and their feet. "My clever, clever children," Yassamin sighs and hugs both tight to her chest, Jaffar hugging her from behind. "You will go far in the world one day."

"Besides, Father is right," Salsabil mumbles into Yassamin's breasts. "It's such a lovely garden, and the dates are so lovely, and now we are all happy, after being sad. It _has_ to be because God is with us right here."

"I'm not going to argue with that," Yassamin laughs and hugs her tighter.

"God is like a hug!" Anwar declares, laughing at his own realisation, as ecstatic as a fakir. "God's in every hug."

"And _I'm_ not going to argue with _that,_ " Jaffar sighs in delight and hugs his beloved family ever tighter, manifesting the very concept of Divine Presence with the strength of his arms as thoroughly, as devotedly and as passionately as he can.


	2. Chapter 2

*** 

**Afrasiyab**

 **The harem**

*** 

"I'll show you transcendence!" Jaffar chuckles into Yassamin's breasts as they tussle upon the bed in their undershirts, he tickling her until she shrieks. "I am going to," he murmurs around a mouthful of breast, "set every atom of this body of yours," he yanks off both their shirts and continues to bite and paw at her, "afire with divine flame until you blaze like an angel in the night!"

But Yassamin is already aflame. Her face flushed, her hair tousled, she pants underneath Jaffar as he wrestles her down into the mattress, pinning her to it by her wrists; still, she mock-struggles with him because she knows it but excites him further.

Perhaps it is the fact that they are not in their own house that now arouses her so, and Jaffar, too: for they lie in one of the grand bedrooms of Mohammad's pleasure-palace beside the river, holidaying by the water and the cool shade of the forest for the hottest weeks of the summer. Perhaps it is the fragrances the room is suffused with that remind her of her youth, too: Latifa had never forgotten the expensive incenses their mother used to burn in Basra, and has had the palaces of Samarkand perfumed with the same ingredients ever since her arrival here. 

Indeed, Yassamin has not smelled this particular mixture of sandalwood, roses, ambergris and oudh since she had been but a maiden: always, always whenever she has set foot in Latifa's harem the fragrance brings back to her a flood of memories of cool afternoons in her garden pavilions, of feeling the caress of the wind upon her naked body as she'd lain beside her pool after her bath, listening to the whisper of her beloved djinni upon the wind. 

Jaffar sighs in delight as he catches this thought from her mind; he lies down on top of her, lowering his weight onto her body, luxuriating in the softness of her flesh. "And here he is, my sweet," he says and kisses her slowly, deeply; "here he is." 

"And I am glad, glad!" she moans into his kiss from the bottom of her belly with utter, joyous abandon, hugging him with her legs. Her blood rushes hot and heavy and heady in her veins like wine, her every limb keen and trembling with it, the pulse at her jugular aflutter against his lips; at the scratch of his moustache, her cunny tightens so violently it lifts her very womb.

"Are you enspelling me?" she laughs, out of breath, trying to pull back her hips so as to guide his prick into her cunny.

Yet he but laughs and shakes his head, teasing her by still holding her by the wrists. "No," he chuckles, and even the brush of the long locks of hair that have escaped his ponytail are torture upon the sensitised skin of her neck and shoulders; that devilish look in his eyes and the way he now flicks down his lashes make her cunny pulse once again, now aching painfully from her need to have him inside of her. "It is all of your own engineering, my little witch," he says and leans down to kiss her, and it's well that he does, considering the loud whimper she lets out as he begins to rut the length of his cock between the folds of her cunny. 

And here, she had thought he was tarrying because he was not yet hard enough to take her! Yet hard he is, hard and hot and just as afire as she is; she shivers as she realises just how wet she is, just how swollen, all of her full and ready and pulsing against his touch. She groans and tosses in frustration, all the blood that's now escaped her head and packed into her hips leaving her dizzy and aching; his rubbing drives her into such a frenzy she can now no longer tell one cunny-clench from another in her heat.

"What's gone into you, husband?" she asks, pulling her mouth off his with a smack, slapping his arse with the soles of her feet. "Why, you usually take credit for every drop of sap this cunny's ever exuded!"

"That's no drop," he drawls, in a voice that gives her gooseflesh and hardens her nipples, "but a veritable deluge," he purrs and lets out an exaggerated sigh of delight as he continues to rock his prick between her cunny's lips, as if he meant to wet himself with it entirely before entering her. "We most definitely should holiday here more often if it turns us twenty years younger. I feel a young stallion! Can you feel it?" he laughs and ruts more vigorously against her.

"No," she says and bites her lip, looking up at him, trying not to laugh. "And that's the problem, you fool. There's an organ right there that's meant for sensing the very thing. But doing _that,_ " and she nods downwards to where he is still rubbing against her with a blissful expression on his face, "is like trying to make me smell a flower by stuffing it in my ear."

"Would you rather I stuffed you somewhere else instead?" he says, now himself holding back laughter as he finally lets go of her wrists and begins to guide his prick inside of her. "Here?" he feigns calmness, but as her cunny's entrance reflexively squeezes around the head of his cock, his voice grows higher in pitch and he, too, trembles.

"Please," she says, her own voice now a hoarse whisper, a sob hitching in her chest. She has not wanted it like this, needed it like this in a long time; as he finally slides inside of her, the walls of her sex are so swollen and so packed with blood it hurts for her to accommodate him. That a woman should even be able to feel arousal at such a level--that it begins to change into a pain similar to that of a penetration too hasty, unprepared-for! 

_He has made me virgin again,_ she thinks deliriously, _a virgin; his love having so annihilated me over and over that each night, a new Yassamin is born in his bed: each new joining a new wedding night. And what's a little pain to one finally joined with one's beloved?_ she sobs, panting underneath him in love that's like terror, at the shock of being entered so: so fast and so completely, all of her taken, taken whole. 

"Oh, my love--" Jaffar slows down and hugs her, holds her; he cradles her in his arms, lifting her from the bed a little, the strength of his thin arms always to her a wonder, the way he so carries her with such ease. 

"It's wonderful," she whispers; "please, don't stop." And just as she opens her body to him, so does she now open to him her whole consciousness, her experience, all that she feels; the barriers between them fall away completely and she is dissolved in him like salt in the sea. Just as the mystics describe dissolution in God, the great Beloved-- _my love--know that I said what I said for the sake of the lives of our children, their safety--never on my prayer mat have I ever felt the Oneness as I feel it with you, like this--oh--_

 _I know, I know, I know,_ he echoes into her, rolling into her a wave; an ocean of warm, sweet care. "I never doubted that, my sweet," he rasps as he takes her mouth and begins to truly rock himself into her, lacing their fingers as he laces his thoughts with hers. 

And she answers him, rolling back into him, all of her already at that level of sublime pleasure at which each one of his strokes inside of her is another opening, opening, opening. Not only her cunny but her very womb, her entire body is opening to him: her hips, her chest, even her limbs unfolding like there were knots being loosened within her, knots she never knew even existed. Their love always, always this rhythm of opening and closing--oh, a part of her wishes she would never close but always keep on opening, feeling ashamed for ever having let the weight of life so press her down, to so close her--

Yet, now, the rays of his thought glitter golden upon her waves, he laughing playfully into her shoulder. _Beloved, it is but the flower closing her petals for the night so that each morning, the sun may have the pleasure of kissing them open anew._

And he shows to her the pleasure he takes in her undoing, the way the walls of her mind unfold and sigh and flow around him buoyant, free: like the pleasure of swimming through seaweed, or his hair blowing about him in the wind, the whisper of leaves as he walks with her through a garden of night-blooming jessamine. 

_My beautiful love, my beautiful, my wonderful,_ he sobs into her and trembles above her: the way the hot wet tightness of her flesh now so embraces him, the squeeze of her cunny's muscles a new shock of pleasure to him at his each stroke. And that these squeezes should be those of her _own_ pleasure, her _own_ ripples, tremors, clenches! The fact that she is not massaging him deliberately like a slave girl, but that it's her enjoyment, her love itself now pleasuring him so--oh, but these make him lose himself in bliss, cascades of bliss upon bliss.

Together, they roll into release, no difference now between the sea-bed and the sea, the rock and the waves crashing into it, between sunlight and foam: so perfectly do they now surge into one another that they laugh into each other's mouths in the aftershocks. That each one of their ripples should be so reflected in the other's body that they even spasm in time, his prick pulsing just as her cunny squeezes around it; at each one of his ejaculations her womb pulls and sucks at him, swallowing him into her depths. So intensely does she feel this that she wonders for a moment whether their womb-sealing spell has failed them, but no, no: the seal is still in place, and now, she laughs even more as she realises that it is but Jaffar's spirit that now surges into her womb and sends out further pleasure-ripples from it, nourishing her body with bliss. 

_It's bizarre,_ she thinks. _Did you just... somehow fecundate my soul with your love? Is that it?_

Jaffar chuckles into her shoulder, panting on top of her, still trembling too much to speak with words. _I can feel it. Like your every atom is humming with life,_ he sighs into her, revelling within the pleasure of the female orgasm, as is his wont: he much prefers to float in this golden, warm delight rather than the melancholy, exhausted and lifeless sensation, the little death that follows the male release. _Whatever I did, the results are worth it._

 _I feel a little guilty... almost,_ Yassamin thinks. _That there's all this nourishment, all this love, all this potential here, and--_

 _You are not wasting it,_ he snaps immediately, having known this concern from her before. _I am nourished from it right now, and tomorrow, you will be nourishing your children with it. With that wonderful smile,_ he tells her and nuzzles her face.

 _I know,_ she says; she shudders at the thought of the certain death that'd await her should she become pregnant again. _Forgive me; it must be but natural for a woman to feel this way, even if Reason--whose voice you are embodying now, I know--would counsel otherwise._

Thus, she breathes deep and exhales, wrapping all of this love and warmth and Creation's heat about her beloved, beloved husband: she fancies that in doing this, she is giving unto him of her years--perhaps, of her youth; of all this energy in her that would otherwise have been used to incarnate more children. She wishes and wishes that this is indeed, so: that she is rejuvenating him, extending his years, nourishing his body with hers the way a mother nourishes a child within her womb. 

_I will not protest to that,_ Jaffar sighs into her shoulder, a touch of melancholy twinkling in his eyes. _You are so good to me, Yassamin. So good to me,_ he whispers into her mind, kissing her cheek, trying not to weep; _it is indeed thanks to you that I am here, and I could not be more grateful._

And so they lie there for a long while, she cocooning him in the soft warm glow of all this life that's now pulsing through her veins; he contemplating the miracle of it, even his old engineering logic now coming to the fore and analysing the inner workings of a woman's creative force, marvelling at what great powers are set into motion by every sexual act--the energy raised and released by the stimulation of the cunny and the womb. Is it like the kind of heat and energy created by friction, perhaps? Or like--

But now, she pulls out of his mind, letting out a yelp of hysterical laughter. "Oh, my, God."

He groans and rolls off her, burying his face in a pillow. "I didn't mean for you to see that."

"Is that what you really did to your cat when you were little? Although I shouldn't even ask, should I?" she groans. "Of course you did."

"It was a scientific experiment," he mumbles. "They do that routinely with bigger animals, I'll have you know. Besides, she seemed as if she was in pain--no, _agony_ from her heat, and as there were no willing tomcats nearby... well."

"I hope it was the blunt end of the pen!" she cackles, hardly able to breathe for her laughter as she imagines little Jaffar chasing the cat around his quarters, trying to use his secretarial implements to deliver her the mounting she needed.

Jaffar pulls the pillow over his face and moans loudly. "It was. And it worked! So, there!"

Now, Yassamin has to grab a pillow herself to breathe into; otherwise she will faint for all her guffawing. "Oh, my God," she keeps on laughing, so hard that Jaffar's sperm bursts out of her cunny with a terrible slurp, but she doesn't care. "Please don't tell the children that. Salsabil would try something exactly like it; I just know it."

Jaffar pulls the pillow off his head. "Well, you can't tell them it _doesn't_ work." And now, he pulls the pillow off Yassamin's face, too. "After all, it works for their mother!" he cries and proceeds to tickle her wildly, sending her into further hysterics. "What we have here is a thoroughly sated tigress!"

"Stop!" she wails as he wrestles her into the mattress. "The guards will hear!"

Jaffar blows hair from his face and glances in the direction of the door, then at Yassamin, having to blow hair from his face again. "This is nothing compared to the show we've just given them."

She still chuckles underneath him, her breasts jiggling upon her chest. "Well, I hope we've entertained them at least. Do you really think they're spying on us that much?"

"I am certain of it," he says, then raises his voice a little more, deliberately. "Shame we're such boring old fools."

 _Yes,_ Yassamin thinks at him, raising her eyebrow. _No heretical thoughts, no erotic perversions, no state secrets, no secret formulae by which to make metal come alive..._

Jaffar tilts his head and lets out a mocking croon, also deliberately loud. "Oh, but I _do_ apologise, wife. You are right about the transcendence," he says, half-mockingly: yet it pays to be careful at court and to at least appear as orthodox as possible. Even if he takes his hand to Yassamin's cunny right now, stroking it, making her jerk in surprised delight. "Come," he says; "it's almost time for the late night prayers. Let us roll out the prayer rugs and make obeisance to the Divine..."

And yet it is her body he means, her sex his prayer-niche, the womb his Kaaba: she shivers in blasphemous, illicit delight as he prostrates between her legs and sets down to worship.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Attaf the Baker's Son, AKA Breadbasket Guy is based on a real Samarkand bread seller from [this set of photographs](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/164892111498/colour-photographs-of-samarkand-by-sergei) from 1911. Have a doodle illustrating the scene with Jaffar, the kids and Attaf [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/166468444838/did-i-mention-i-am-indeed-featuring-the-guy-with)

***  


**Samarkand**

**The Grand Bazaar**

*** 

"Attaf, why have you got a breadbasket on your head?" Anwar asks the street vendor. 

Indeed, Attaf the Baker's Son is not carrying his breadbasket anywhere, the way he sometimes does on busy days, delivering large orders to Afrasiyab during festivals: he but sits in his familiar spot near the bazaar's gate. But now, in addition to the usual traylike breadbasket on his lap, he bears another, equally large basket balanced over his head, attached to a thick shawl he has draped over his turban and back, not unlike a lady's mantle. This puzzles Anwar greatly, as it does Salsabil. However, while Anwar is always direct about his enquiries to the point of bluntness, Salsabil does not speak; seemingly because she is speculating about the reasoning behind such an arrangement, and is busy investigating its technicalities, trying even now to peer around Attaf to see how the basket-shawl contraption attaches to his turban.

Attaf smiles at Anwar, then glances at Jaffar from underneath the shadow of the basket. However, the basket makes it impossible for Attaf to meet the eyes of a standing man properly, especially a man as exceptionally tall as Jaffar, so after some squinting and squirming and an apologetic look, he turns down to address Anwar again. "Visibility, my dear boy! One must stand out. Do you _know_ how many bakeries there are in this city?" he asks, playfully opening his eyes wide in mock-amazement to drive home his point, the way one does when talking to children.

"Twenty-three," Salsabil, always immune to child-talk, mumbles as she walks around Attaf, barely tall enough to peer into the topmost basket herself. "Twenty-four if you count the one in--"

"Nevermind that, Salsabil," Jaffar says, taking her hand and smiling at Attaf. "My little philosophers have made it their business to take the entire sublunar world for their academy, and why not? One can learn much more at a bazaar than in an ordinary classroom."

"That's right," Attaf says, noticing how Anwar is practically drooling over the fresh flatbreads. "The usual, master?"

Jaffar lifts out his purse. "And I'll pay a little extra, if you tell my daughter how you've attached that thing onto your head," he says, nodding at the basket--he can practically hear the gears turning in Salsabil's head. "She is a specialist on everything that can be worn on the head--God knows why, because it's certainly not out of feminine modesty!--and methinks she will not sleep tonight lest she find out."

"Oh, please! _Please,_ Attaf, tell me!" Salsabil bounces on her feet excitedly. "Pins or straps? It's pins, isn't it?"

"Some very great pins indeed, my dear girl," Attaf says and pulls out a very long iron pin, about nine inches in length, from his shawl. "These are what we call packsaddle-pins. Ali--my cousin is a camel-driver," he pauses to explain as he tucks the pin back into place with an elaborate movement, picking up bits of the shawl and his turban before finally thrusting it through the bottom of the basket, "he uses these to pin great sacks of cargo onto the packsaddles of camels; you weave it into the fabric like so. With these, you'll be sorted out for the longestmost of journeys--even across the Sahara itself!"

Salsabil's eyes fly wide. "He's been to the Sahara?!" And now, she is all but vibrating: recently, she has been possessed by a passion not just for elaborate headdresses, but also for Africa. "Or the _Nile?_ " she sighs dreamily. For days, now, she has been daydreaming of the great river, having read a book on its wonders; only to have her fancies of golden waves and pagan monuments and sleepy crocodiles interrupted by her mother's admonishing that she had better place Mecca on top of her itinerary before wandering anywhere else. 

Attaf's eyes twinkle. "Oh, yes, my child. Last year, he made it right into the heart of the desert, as far as Gao. And the--" 

But Anwar interrupts them with an upraised hand. "Wait!" he cries as Jaffar picks a kerchief from his bag and reaches out to take loaves from the basket atop Attaf's head. "How do you know people won't steal?" he asks, looking from Attaf to Jaffar and then back again. "That they won't take more loaves than they're supposed to?"

"A good question," Jaffar smirks and makes a point of showing Attaf the number of loaves he'd taken before wrapping them up and tucking them into his bag. "Even if my own son implies I am a thief!" he laughs and tosses some extra coins into Attaf's hand.

Attaf offers Jaffar a dazzling smile. "With this class of clientele--my soul is your ransom, my esteemed master, great shaykh--one needn't worry. One can place one's trust in God."

Salsabil raises her forefinger and tuts, shaking her head. "Haven't you heard the saying, Attaf? 'Trust in God, but tie up your camel!'"

Attaf bursts into laughter. "Your daughter is indeed a great shaykha," he says and tries to ruffle Salsabil's head, a gesture which she ducks with her usual practiced grace. Therefore, Attaf ruffles Anwar's head instead. "And a little judge in the making, this little fellow here. Of wise and sound judgement at the age of--how old are you two? I forget."

"Eight and a half!" they declare in unison. 

Jaffar adjusts the bag over his shoulder and takes both children by the hand. "And your father is ancient; he longs for a rest. Come, children. Is there anything else you want to ask Attaf before we say goodbye?"

"But one more thing," Anwar says. "Does the funny basket really help?"

"Oh, yes," Attaf says, although to Jaffar's ears, he does not sound quite so sure. "I've sold a little more after I started putting up two baskets. Besides," he says defensively, "even on the quiet days, this thing provides a most _marvellous_ shade from the sun. I used to feel faint on the hotter days, but now, it's no trouble at all."

Jaffar tosses him one more little coin. "Here. Get yourself a cold drink for good measure."

"Thank you most kindly, illustrious sire," Attaf says, bowing as much as he can without tipping the loaves out of his head-basket. "May God extend your years and shower you with His grace! If there's anything more I can do for you--"

"Later, Attaf," Jaffar smiles and leads the children deeper into the bazaar. "Your mother will be upset if we don't return soon."

"You could buy Mother a perfume to make her not upset," Anwar says, slowing down beside the perfume stall and inhaling from the wondrous scents of cinnamon, oudh and musk. "She loves perfumes!"

Jaffar laughs. "I _could,_ but I have used that trick so many times she now has a hundred."

"Or a new veil!" Salsabil points at the new stall set up by a Chinese silk-merchant. "That pink one would look _so_ beautiful on her--"

"Ah," Jaffar laughs and squeezes her hand. "You're just saying that because you want one from the leftover fabric, don't you?" 

But it's fair enough--they _are_ having a holiday, and if Jaffar has thrown money at a mere baker, he might as well indulge in a little luxury as well, seeing as the last doll he and Yassamin had finished had fetched an unheard-of sum. 

Therefore, Jaffar and the children launch an expedition into the silk-merchant's stall, Salsabil knowing more about the embroideries and weaving techniques than the merchant himself does. Anwar, in turn, haggles more forcefully than his father does, his eyes lighting up with a sharp, dark keenness that reminds Jaffar of his younger brothers. Indeed, in Harun's day, Mohammad had been in charge of the royal embroidery workshops in Baghdad, always having had an eye for the latest changes in fashions. It had been he who had decided what sorts of fabrics were manufactured and imported in a given year; consequently, the entire city had worn what the Barmakids had deemed fashionable. 

"Look, Father! This one is _amazing!_ " Anwar says and lifts out a fabric that's so sheer one barely even notices it's there; gently, he turns it to and fro, watching in awe as it sparkles in varicoloured hues of pink and pearly iridescence. "It's as lovely as the dawn."

Salsabil runs her hand over it reverently. "It's queen-fabric..." she looks up at the merchant. "I am right, am I not? It is the same iridescent fabric that was worn by the queens of old?"

"Indeed, master;" the young merchant says at Jaffar and not Salsabil, "it _is_ a very fine fabric," even if he--barely twenty, it seems--is far too young to know of its history; he has to be bluffing, has to not know the fabric's true value. This, Jaffar is certain of; for it is only thanks to Jaffar's stories of old Baghdad that the children even know of such a fabric's existence.

For immediately, the moment his fingertips skim it--it's so soft one fears it'd break like a spider's web upon touch--Jaffar recognises the fabric for the sort Khayzuran, Harun's mother had introduced to the Great Harem. It's the most precious of all silks ever manufactured, more expensive than the imperial purple of the Romans, even: only one family in Basra knows the secret of weaving in this kind of iridescence. Its ingredients are precious and rare, including real crystals and pearls, some say even diamonds: it's called queen-fabric exactly because only queens could afford it, and it's only ever been woven for them exclusively, never traded openly in the marketplace.

How has a bolt of such fabric ended up in a Samarkand bazaar?

Jaffar shoots up his head and casts a penetrating look upon the merchant, who stiffens in fear. 

"May I ask--how did you acquire this fabric?" Jaffar asks, staring at the youth steadily, leaving him in no doubt as to what he is implying: that this fabric must have been stolen from whichever caravan had been carrying it in the first place. 

"I-I couldn't possibly say, master," the youth stammers. "M-my father has many c-contacts--"

"I am sure he does," Jaffar says and lets go of the fabric, straightening himself out to his full height, his eyes fixed upon the merchant, pard upon hare. He looms over the man, swallowing him with his shadow--

"Fu Feng!" A voice cries from behind Jaffar's back. 

"How's business?" cries another.

Three men--the merchant's friends, it seems--enter the stall, jolly and loud. Hands are clasped, backs patted, the stall filling with a burst of cheer. 

The merchant laughs nervously. "It's not bad, not bad," he says, visibly relieved as he welcomes the interruption.

Jaffar exchanges a glance with the now-nervous children and decides to drop his investigation for the time being. Besides, it's not his, but Mohammad's business to keep an eye on the criminal elements in this region: Jaffar makes sure to memorise the names and faces of these fellows, filing them away in the library of his mind in a box marked "Surveillance."

This box, he decides, he will pass onto Mohammad and his spies forthwith: as far as the Barmakids are concerned, the only good bandit is a dead bandit. Of all the cities on the Silk Road, Samarkand is the hardest for any caravan to reach without being robbed: there are half a dozen gangs for each major route into the city, the forests and the mountains ideal hiding places for the vilest, most ruthless of cutthroats. No woman over the age of ten enters Samarkand unmolested, it's said, unless she is accompanied by an army; no caravan leaves it without an additional load of valuable goods to be paid to the bandits as taxes.

"Come, children," Jaffar says and extends his hands to both; Salsabil and Anwar rush to him with uncharacteristic obedience.

"But, my lord, I am sure I can negotiate a price--" the merchant cries as they turn to leave the stall.

"Later, master Feng," Jaffar says firmly over his shoulder, with a glance that makes the merchant shudder visibly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A doodle of Zainab mopping Lina, with a sulky Fadl, [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/169603968943/a-scene-from-roses-23-yes-still-in-the-works)

*** 

**New Lesbos**

 **The shabestan**

*** 

"Lina!" Zainab cries in delight as her favourite rushes in through the door and down the stairs into the cool, shadowed depths of the shabestan. 

For it is in the basement of New Lesbos that Zainab and all her girls are now hiding from the summer's elements, having moved there for the duration. This is a shabestan far vaster than the modest cellar Jaffar and Yassamin use as their workshop, for it is equipped with all the comforts engineering can craft and money can buy: its vaulted rooms are cooled through an elaborate system of wind towers, the largest of the entertaining-chambers and bedrooms each divided into squares by little water canals and fountains, like an underground paradise garden. One can even access the baths from here without having to go aboveground; a little tunnel leads straight to the private bathchamber and all its sensuous joys. 

However, today, the weather is far too hot for most people to even think about sensuous joys, and even Lina--otherwise the erotic athlete--is no exception. With a great sigh, she throws off her long black mantle, dropping her bags unceremoniously on the floor; with another great sigh, she collapses face down on one of the couches lining the walls. 

"I am going to _die_ of this heat," she moans with her face buried in her arms, her ordinarily soft and pleasant voice now made rough from thirst. "Water! I beg of you, water!"

"Nusayr. Nusayr!" Zainab barks at one of the eunuchs, throwing a pistachio shell at his feathered head-dress. "I've _told_ you to keep a pitcher of sorbet ready for my favourites! And there you sit, you vain trollop, filing your nails!" 

"No sorbet," Lina moans into her arms. "Sweet things will but make me thirstier. But plain water, please."

Zainab smacks her lips, gathers up her voluminous over-skirts and waddles over to Lina, cooing at her tenderly. "My poor little mouse-mouse," she says and pets Lina's hair. "The sun treats you harshly because he is jealous of your beauty," she babbles as she takes the bowl of ice-water from Nusayr and lifts it to Lina's lips. "Drink up, drink up."

After Lina has downed the entire bowl, Zainab climbs onto the divan and lifts Lina's head into her lap, placing a cool, wet towel over her forehead. "There, my little one. Now you can tell me _all_ about what happened today."

"Not in front of the others," Lina groans, pulling the wet towel over her eyes.

"Oh? That juicy, is it?" Zainab's face brightens, her abundant jewellery tinkling with her chuckles. "Very well, then," she says and claps her hands at the girls and eunuchs still lazing about in the room. "Out! Out, I say! All of you! And don't come back until I call for you again!"

"Come to think of it, I might need something stronger," Lina mumbles, now more serious. "For it is not a scandal, mistress; if I'm right, it's something altogether more terrifying."

"Yet you do not seem frightened."

Lina pulls off the towel and wipes her face with it. "It's because I am not sure of what I heard. I may be imagining things; the heat may have gone to my head."

Zainab takes the towel from her and tosses it aside, now cupping Lina's face in her hands, staring at her upside down. "Come, mouse-mouse. I would hear it."

"Is the master coming over tonight?"

"Don't call him that. He's not my master."

Lina rolls her eyes. "Is Old Eagle Beak going to grace us with his presence tonight? The Old Son Of a Bitch? The Scoundrel of a Weasel of a Bastard?" she rattles through some of Zainab's favourite epithets. "Horse-face? Horse-cock?"

Now it's Zainab's turn to roll her eyes. "The heat _has_ gone into your head. And yes, I think he is indeed coming over tonight. Unless he's in one of his pious moods and has chosen his precious Brotherhood over us. Why?"

"It's got something to do with the Brotherhood... or at least I think so," Lina says and fidgets with the buttons of her jacket. 

"Come, now, Lina," Zainab says, her bangles rattling as she stamps her fists to her hips. What _is_ this nonsense? Either you heard something or you didn't. Tell me everything, from the very start."

Lina sits up with a sigh, letting Zainab tidy her hair as she gathers her thoughts. But as she's had her needle-straight black hair cut to a chin-length pageboy's bob, there isn't much there to tidy; she has to speak now or risk Zainab's infamous temper. 

"It was at the paper mill," Lina says, digging into one of her bags. "I was picking up the blank books, like you told me to."

"Three books, four hundred pages each, as we agreed?"

"See for yourself, mistress," Lina says and hands to her the thick, skillfully bound volumes one by one. "I asked to inspect them, deciding to count the pages by myself, and they let me do that. But when the bookbinder left the room--I was wearing the burqa and we were both speaking in Arabic, so that he did not recognise me for one of his own race--I overheard an agitated conversation in Chinese."

"Well? What did they say?"

"That's exactly the problem, mistress. Just like you, I barely remember my native tongue, so I was struggling to understand what they were saying. This was a different dialect, too, so I could only make out a word here, another there. But it was clear that the bookbinder and his friend were distressed, as if they were in a great hurry. At first, I thought it but a business matter, because they were speaking of debts being repaid; but then they began to speak of payment in blood, of revenge. The angrier man called the Barmakids a bunch of traitors, as if they were somehow responsible for whatever it was that they were angry about. The quieter man said something like "heart" and "faith" in Arabic... I remember it because he pronounced it in a strange way, but when he mentioned the Brotherhood, I knew he must have meant the Shaykh." 

"'The Shaykh?'" Zainab frowns. "That could mean anyone," she mumbles, the respectful title often given to anyone considered knowledgeable or pious, not just a tribal elder.

"No, it was definitely the old Shaykh, the leader of the Brotherhood. Qutb-ad-Din is what they call him; 'the heart of the faith,'" Lina explains hurriedly with a wave of her hand, her knowledge of Islam always having been better than Zainab's. "But, madam, it was the next thing that he said that was the most terrible: 'A hundred Arabs slain for each one of our seventy-five years of slavery...' and I swear, all my hair stood on end."

Zainab's eyes fly wide. "And?"

"And that's when the bookbinder returned. I paid him and ran for my life."

"But that doesn't make sense! Who's going to have revenge on whom? A handful of Chinese against--" she blinks. "Arabs? What's this nonsense about the Arabs? The Barmakids aren't Arabs."

And Zainab should know--her late husband and his father having been one of the few Arab princelings who'd ever managed to hold power even briefly in the Sogd. Kawthar and his father--the previous governor--had been ousted by the people over a decade ago, the members of their government either murdered or exiled to Baghdad. Only Zainab had stayed, seizing her chance to take over her husband's mining operations and factories, resulting in her becoming far more powerful here as a widow than she ever could have been in Baghdad as one of the many wives of some noble or another. And once Mohammad had arrived to pacify the region, he--having learned statecraft upon his mother's knee--had been most kind and tolerant towards Zainab, immediately realising it was better to leave the city's industry in the hands of a peace-loving widow than some sabre-rattling, power-hungry young man. 

But now, sabres are being drawn against Mohammad, the guardian of an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity in the region?

Zainab shakes her head. "You'd be a fool to hate the Barmakids, or a madman--why bite the hand that feeds you, the hand that extends over your head in blessing? Why, Fadl told me that it was exactly because the Barmakids were Persians that the locals accepted them as rulers. That's why Harun sent him over, and then Mohammad, and it was only then that things quieted down. Are you sure they really meant Arabs, and not all Muslims?"

"Perhaps. I swear that's all I know, madam."

"But you _do_ know some of the Chinese folks down there, do you not? What do _you_ think it's all about?"

"You yourself know the bitterness of the slave. There is not a Chinese soul here who isn't a freedman or a slave, or the descendant of a slave. The 'seventy-five years' must mean the battle of Talas; when they built the paper mill. But indeed, there are not many of us, so that's why it doesn't make any sense; were they to rebel, they'd need an army. So that must be why he mentioned the Shaykh--the Brotherhood are all warriors, are they not?"

Zainab nods. "That's why Fadl likes them so much. All their elders are old generals, and the rest are in their thrall, he said: 'the kinds of youths who have their bellies full of fire and their heads full of air.'" Zainab drums the cushions she is sitting upon, the little bells on her rings chiming restlessly--until she raises both her hands in the air beside her head, her bracelets joining the band in one cacophonic rattle. "But even with an army, it doesn't make any sense! Why rise against the Barmakids, the most benevolent of masters? Over something that happened four generations ago?"

"I, for one, have no desire to rise against my mistress, the one who holds my heart in her hand," Lina says and clasps Zainab's hand, kissing her palm with genuine affection. "And it's not only the Barmakids I am worried about, madam," she says, searching Zainab's eyes, her own flickering with worry. "They might not stop at the Sultan; they would be glad to get their hands on your fortunes."

"Everyone wants to get his hands on my fortunes," Zainab scoffs. "Oh, but this is _horrible_ , Lina. We must tell Jaffar at once; we must see if he can investigate this through his crystal."

It is then that a bell chimes at the door. Both women jump, as this is an alarm bell, signifying only one thing: an intruder. The shabestan is entered via an aboveground antechamber, an antechamber usually guarded by the eunuchs; they mute the bell whenever they let someone in, so this can only mean someone has made it past the guards unannounced.

"A thousand apologies, mistress," Nusayr's plainitive voice cries from upstairs; he sounds as if he has just been awoken from sleep. But as he doesn't sound particularly alarmed, this means he has recognised the visitor for a friendly one.

Indeed, there's the click of high-heeled riding boots across the floor and soon enough, a pair of long, sinewed legs--clad in the vainestmost, tightestmost of green trousers--leap down the stairs and their owner emerges into view, smirking irreverently as is his wont.

"Some bodyguard you have!" Fadl chuckles as he swishes back his cape and opens his arms to embrace Zainab, striding towards her with a broad grin.

Yet, soon enough, he notices neither Zainab or Lina are smiling; rather, they both look extremely uneasy. 

"Pray, what kind of a welcome do you call this?" Fadl asks and stamps his fists to his hips. "Now, I knew it was cool down here in the basement, but I wasn't expecting to be walking into an ice-cabinet!" 

Ignoring Fadl, Zainab turns her head in the direction of the doorway. "Nusayr, you useless son of a dog!" she barks loudly, still shaken at the eunuchs' incompetence at guarding her house from invaders. If a sixty-year-old former warrior can slip into her house just like that, what chance have they got against an army of reckless youths? "Bring wine! The strongest you've got! And hurry, if you want to keep your head!" 

"To hear is to obey!" Nusayr cries, his voice already retreating into the distance.

It is only then that Zainab addresses the intruder. "I think you had better sit down, son of Yahya," Zainab says, looking at Fadl with such a grave expression upon her face, with such a wintry desolation in her eyes that now a chill truly _does_ run through his bones. 

She did not call him "my stallion," did not call him names, and has not even sent Lina away--even if, normally, Zainab is always overcome by jealousy whenever Fadl and Lina are in the same room, worried his eyes might wander to Lina instead of her. 

Therefore, Fadl realises, this must be serious. Zainab, the daughter of berserkers, has seen wars and revolutions and has still fought her way through them all to the very top of Sogdian society: she is not a woman easily shaken. Truly concerned, now, Fadl pulls up a cushion and sits cross-legged opposite the divan, facing the women; he even hesitates to take Zainab's hands at first. But when he does, even her ordinarily warm and soft skin is cold and dry to the touch, and her palms are slightly damp from sweat. 

"Please, my lady," Fadl says, laughing nervously as Nusayr pours them a large bowlful, "do not keep me in suspense any longer. Whatever is the matter?"

"Leave the bottles and the sifting-cloth, Nusayr," Zainab says and dismisses him, looking as if it's only thanks to Fadl holding her hands that she doesn't punch the slovenly eunuch's nose in. "Lina, I think you had better tell Fadl everything you have just told me. And anything else you might remember." 

Lina does, and Fadl listens intently, digesting each word, querying Lina for further details; Zainab squeezes his hands all throughout. 

"What do you make of it?" Zainab finally asks him, letting go of his hands. "You are familiar with the Brotherhood. Do you truly think they would do something so foolish?"

Fadl takes a deep sip of the wine and sighs, passing the bowl on to Lina, whose lips are already stained red from drinking. "I do not _think,_ my lady. I _know._ The Brotherhood has, for a long time, now, been a cauldron of discontent about to boil over. They've harboured so many fools there in these past few months, so many foolish ideas, and those ideas have begun to ferment."

"Fadl, you've never been patient with fools," Zainab says; always, he has told her that he prefers even the company of intelligent heretics and pagans--Jaffar and Zainab, respectively--to the company of stupid Muslims. "What on earth made you seek them out in the first place?"

Fadl smiles wryly. "Can a man not wish to seek his peace with God in his old age? I, and other grown men like myself, sought peace and quietude in the Brotherhood's embrace: we thought to embark on a life of meditation, surrendering all our worries to God. And at first, it truly was all that: we were as brothers, talking about God and His wonders long into the night, singing and dancing and whirling, soaring to great spiritual heights," he says, his eyes glowing with warm recollection. "But then the younger men started to come, more and more youths, with a violent restlessness in their hearts that no prayer or meditation could quench. Youths who were too young to have ever known war and all its horrors, who thus had all kinds of magnificent fantasies of the life of a warrior."

"And you said there were Chinese boys among them?" Zainab asks him. 

"Aye. Most of the young ones are local boys, recent converts from other faiths: we have a fair few Chinese lads, one former Christian, a few former Manicheans, and even the odd fire-worshipper who now claims to have submitted to Islam. It's because the sermons, especially those of the younger preacher, appeal to those who feel they are dispossessed, who have a desire to fight against those whom they think oppressors, yearning to become martyrs for their cause. It all sounds tremendously Alid, if you ask me..." 

"The what?" Zainab blinks.

Fadl winces, realising he's talking to a woman who doesn't know much of the internal schisms among the various branches of Islam. "Forget about the disagreements in doctrine. All you need to know is that all these boys have something in common: they're dissatisfied with their lot in life, with their families, their castes being on the lowest rungs of society; they've all left their homes and sought a new father in the Shaykh. He has made them believe they can genuinely change things for the better--but while the Shaykh is wise enough to choose his words carefully, so that they can be taken as but exhortations to fight one's _own_ demons, to live a quiet, virtuous life..."

"The boys take them as exhortations to fight someone else instead?" Lina says. 

"Something like that. It's the younger lads who take his words and twist them to their own purposes. They're raring to fight, that's the problem: they have been looking for some excuse, any excuse to fight. And this could be it--wars have been fought for less. All they need is a target, and the Barmakids are an easy and obvious one, simply because we, and your good self, are the ones in power, obviously. As Lina said--and you yourself know the utter absurdity of this idea--there are some fools here who genuinely think the Barmakids sold the Persians out to the Arabs. Even if, as far as we are concerned, we have assumed power _from_ them and have given it back to the Persians, Sogdians included! Almighty God, there is a Persian woman on the throne of the Caliphate itself! But no... there are still those here who would tear open old wounds from old battles, and those who are too young to have yet understood all the good things the Barmakids have done for them. All they know are the old legends from a century ago: that the Tang supported their grandfathers against the Caliphate for so long--yet they've conveniently forgotten all about the Sogdians, Chinese or otherwise, that the Tang have massacred on their side of the border!" He shakes his head in exasperation. "These boys know nothing of history, know nothing of the real political situation and just want a brawl," he huffs and grumbles into his wine. "We protect them, let them even keep their heathen temples, and _this_ is how they repay us!"

"What about the Shaykh?" Lina asks when Fadl finally pauses in his tirade.

Fadl smacks his lips. "He's been neutral on the matter, a little too neutral for my liking, actually. Let's just say I'm glad I never told them my real name," he says, nudging Zainab with his elbow. "Come, aren't you at least a _little_ impressed with that? There's still some of the old Barmakid craftiness left in me, yet! Know that I would never get myself involved in anything like this without taking the utmost precautions. As a matter of fact, part of the reason I joined the Brotherhood's mission was to keep an eye on those rascals."

"You say that _now,_ just so you can sound smarter than the rest of the fanatics," Zainab groans and rolls her eyes. "You said nothing of spying the first few times you came back from there," she gestures, widening her eyes with her fingers. "Your eyes were like this, glowing with what you said was divine light. 'The Shaykh is emanating pure baraka!'" she mocks.

Fadl raises his eyebrow. "I still think he does. He is a very charismatic man, if bent with age. It's his followers who are the problem; those boys are as dry kindling to any flame. It's true I had a great deal of respect for the old man--I still do--but these past few months, I have seen that flame grow wilder and wilder in the boys' eyes, less and less contained as the group has grown." 

"Nothing new under the sun, then," Zainab scoffs and drinks deep from the bowl. 

"Indeed," Fadl says, accepts the bowl from her and continues. "Do you know what the pagans here believe? That once you begin to worship an idol, the idol is charged, fed with power from the believers' faith in it, and supposedly, it becomes more and more alive from it, as if it were storing that power. And that's when the idol begins to _respond_ to its worshippers, to send that power back, to imbue the worshippers with it, too, only now stronger than ever before?"

"But that's how it works," Zainab says, her voice softer, now, her eyes distant with happy memories. "When I was little, we used to have a blood-feast at the end of each season; my father would sacrifice a pig and sprinkle its blood all around the shrine, the house, and us," she says, enjoying the shock upon Fadl's face. "Father said that if you did not sprinkle the gods and the sacrificial stones regularly with mead and blood, the gods would grow hungry and desert us."

Fadl laughs heartily. "That's an even better way of putting it, my little barbarian. For I fear that the Shaykh, too, has begun to thirst for blood. There are always great men and women of spirit walking the earth, great sages with great gifts bestowed upon them by God, yet there are very few who do not go mad from power once the numbers of their followers begin to increase. What the Shaykh says is from God, and I am sure of it; yet..." he shakes his head and takes a deep sip from the bowl, then gives it back to Zainab. "Like I said, boys of that kind always want a fight--if they have no reason to fight, they will invent one. That's how it always starts: when things are peaceful, too peaceful, the kinds of people who are never happy about _anything_ turn their own petty little annoyances into points of theological quarrel."

"What do you mean?" Lina asks.

"I mean the minutest things. The acceptable length of one's beard, the way you wipe your arse--or should you wash it every time you use the privy?" He glances upwards and clasps his cheek, pretending to ponder this seriously. "And whether or not it's true that the Prophet once cut off his sleeve so as not to disturb the cat who'd fallen asleep on it."

"My grandmother used to say that about the Buddha!" Lina cries in astonishment.

"Yassamin always told me it was Ali," Zainab mumbles.

Fadl raises his eyebrow. "Exactly. And suddenly, all these people around you who have grown up with a story that's different from your own are now deemed wicked unbelievers. No matter how pious they are, no matter how harmless, they suddenly become as demons in the eyes of those who would see demons everywhere." 

"And you Barmakids are forever being called demons left, right and centre," Zainab says, leaning back against the divan with a sigh. 

"To tell you the truth, I am a little disappointed in that they haven't chosen a different tune," Fadl sneers. "I mean, we have been hearing this same old song for decades, now: Barmakids are dangerous heathens, debauchees, necromancers, what have you; when we have given more to this empire than any other family ever has or ever will!" He snarls. "It was our family who raised Persia up from the rubble the Arab barbarians left in their wake; it was we who taught them how to levy taxes, water the fields, manage armies. You'd think people would've developed a little more gratitude by now. Just a tiny little bit," he says with a pinching gesture, "but no, no: we're only ever Satan's viceregents on earth." 

"So, is that it?" Zainab asks. "The Chinese mean to use the Brotherhood to... to what? To destroy everything that the Barmakids have built?" she says, furious. "To destroy the most prosperous city in the empire after Baghdad, for a little border skirmish that happened four generations ago; a humiliation no living soul remembers?" Her voice wavers. "It's petty, Lina; that's what it is. Petty."

"Yes, because even if they won, what would they get out of it?" Lina says. "This is what I don't understand; they're simple craftsmen, not fit to rule nations. They most certainly could not take the Barmakids' place, just like that. Nobody could. It's as you said, master," she says to Fadl, "It's the Barmakids who have always been there to pick up the pieces."

"Mmm," Fadl nods and strokes the pointed tip of his beard in contemplation. "The conspirators could be in the pay of the Tang, I suppose. It might be that the Tang are but waiting for a rebellion over here, so they can move in and take over. Divide and conquer, as the Romans used to say. As for the Brotherhood, you could agitate boys like that into doing the stupidest, stupidest things, and still they'd believe themselves martyrs on the way to Paradise. Some of them already believe the Shaykh is the true Imam, and they'd follow him anywhere; all he needs to do is to point a finger at us and we'd have a holy war on our hands."

Zainab shivers and reaches for the wine. "Then you'd better cut off that finger, _now,_ " she says and downs the rest of the wine in one gulp. "Before it's too late."

"But what if I'm wrong?" Lina asks, despairing. "What if this was just one madman and his friend?"

"No, no," Fadl says and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. "This explains so many of the stray conversations I have heard at the monastery myself." He glances up at the dark shadows of the vaults. "Almighty God! To think that I almost left the place before we learned of all this!"

"Whatever it is, we must act quickly," Zainab says, fidgeting with her bangles. "Where _is_ your witch of a brother right now?"

"He is still at Mohammad's, as far as I know. But he would never have left home without a crystal or a scrying-mirror of some kind."

"Then, let's find him!" Zainab says and gets up. "I'll send one of my pigeons."

"Wait," Fadl says and raises his hand. "I agree we must tell my brothers immediately, but it would not be wise for any of us to show up at Afrasiyab; the whole court is full of spies." 

He rummages inside of his sash and lifts out the amulet Jaffar had once given him for emergencies. The finely polished ruby the size and shape of a chicken's egg, hanging from its narrower end on a steel chain: he now holds it up to the light, turning it around and frowning a little. 

"What's wrong?" Zainab asks.

"I've never had to use it before," he laughs and shakes his head. "Do you know, I think he forgot to tell me how it works," he murmurs, lifting it towards Zainab's face.

"You called?" Jaffar asks from the amulet, so sudden and clear and loud that all are thrown back from surprise. 

In his alarm, Fadl drops the amulet, but seeing as Zainab is sitting right underneath it, it falls onto her generously displayed bosom, nestling quite comfortably between the soft mounds of her breasts. 

Zainab bursts into a hearty cackle, the amulet bobbing upon her breasts, never falling off even as she heaves from laughter. 

Jaffar realises where the amulet is sitting, now, and rolls his eyes. "Come. What is it?" he asks, wiping grease from his forehead with the back of his hand, clasping a turnscrew in his fingers. "It had better be important. Mohammad's big pageant is tonight, and the main fountain is still not functioning properly. It was supposed to spray a refreshing cloud of rosewater upon the courtiers, but if I can't finish it in time, I might have to resort to a weather spell," he grumbles.

"Now, there's a thought, brother mine," Fadl says and raises his eyebrow. "We could've used one of those spells in our garden this past fortnight. Where _were_ you when the entire city was praying for rain?"

"Fucking my beautiful wife, as it happens," Jaffar snaps. "That's what we came to Afrasiyab for; to get away from a life of engineering--and look what he saddles me with!" he groans, moving back the mirror or whatever it is he's speaking to them through, so as to display his thoroughly stained leather apron and a vast arrangement of mechanical tools, scattered upon a heavy wooden work bench. In other words, it seems he's left behind his mechanical workshop only to find himself in another: this time, his brother's. "But I doubt it was a need for rain that prompted this sudden visit, brother mine?"

"Are you alone?" Zainab asks.

Jaffar looks around himself. "I cannot be sure," he says in a voice more quiet and serious, now. "What is it?"

"Dimna," Fadl says, and Jaffar's eyes fly wide in shock. 

While Zainab and Lina look at him askance, Fadl recites a few more words after that, in a language neither of them can understand--obviously to frustrate anyone who might be eavesdropping upon them. Fadl is quick, terse, seemingly still worried that someone might understand what he is saying. However, Jaffar takes in every word with seemingly full comprehension, weighs them carefully, nodding silently. Then, he responds in gestures, communicating in what seems like sign language; Fadl nods to indicate his understanding, then dims the amulet in great haste.

"Care to explain all that?" Zainab asks as Fadl snatches the amulet from her breasts and tucks it back into his sash.

"It was Bactrian. The administrative language used by the Barmakids when we were still the ministers of Balkh. I only know a few words, but it's enough. Our father barely spoke it any longer and had to teach it to us; it was invaluable in Baghdad in Harun's day, when we had to keep secrets from him or lose our heads. Have you ever read Kalila and Dimna?"

"Yes!" Lina exclaims, then turns to Zainab to explain animatedly. "It's an old Indian fable, of two jackals who were viziers to the lion-king. One of them was good, the other treacherous. But that's all I can recall. I can't even remember--which one was which?"

"Dimna was the traitor," Fadl nods. "He made the lion-king slay an innocent bull, who used to be his best friend--Dimna manipulated the lion into thinking that the bull was going to betray him. It was my favourite book as a child, and they used to call us that at court," he grins. 'Here come Kalila and Dimna,' they used to say when Jaffar and I walked past; yet they could never decide which one of us was which. But we knew we were the righteous viziers, and it was the traitors we used to call Dimnas. So, you see, but the mention of that name made Jaffar realise what the matter was. I haven't used that epithet in over thirty years," he exhales, shivering a little as the gravity of the matter truly sinks into his bones. "And here, I thought we had retired from all this!"

"Well, what did he say?" Zainab asks, impatient. "When do we see him?"

"Tomorrow night, after the last prayers. We both thought here would be the safest place for us all to meet. He is to bring Mohammad, and their wives, too, if he is able."

Zainab flops back onto the divan with a groan. "It's not clean enough in here! And I'm exhausted..." but as soon as she sees the thunder-clouds gathering over Fadl's brow, she regrets her selfishness. "I apologise. You're right. But your brother had better cast a protective spell around this house. The entirety of it. Permanently!"

"I'm sure he'll manage," Fadl says, and without further ado, he draws his sabre and begins to sharpen it with a whetting-stone. "Just let them try and touch us."

*** 

That night, Zainab weeps as she takes him. Already the fumes of wine within her have undergone that vile alchemy by which they transmute one's gaiety into a dread melancholy; even if Fadl makes love to her with an uncharacteristic tenderness, this but throws into sharp relief all those horrors that now loom over her, and all other women, in war. 

"What if, Fadl," she sobs hysterically underneath him in her drunkenness, "what if this is the last time I will ever lie with a man out of my own free will? What if this is _it,_ my last sip from Pleasure's cup, the last time I will ever feel anything except pain from a prick inside of my body?" 

And now, even the gentlestmost of his strokes feel painful as her cunny and her womb stiffen from fear, hardening, growing cold; the waves of what were once pleasure now turn into but cold, hard stabs into her viscera. She had barely survived the last time, man after man atop her--bleeding and vomiting as the slavers had loaded her onto the caravan--surely, this time, she will die, like Sachi had died beside her in the palanquin, her innards torn, mauled--

"But, my love!" Fadl groans and slips out of her, himself now soft from worry, wine, age. "You terrify me," he pants, exhausted.

Immediately, he regrets those words, as they now make Zainab curl up on her side, facing away from him. Her ample flesh, always so sweetly tremulous from passion's play, now jiggles grotesquely from her sobs, sobs ugly and violent. 

" _I?_ " she croaks. "Terrify _you?!_ When the worst that could happen to you would be over in hours at most; even if they stitched a ferret into your belly, you would not have to give birth to its babes--"

"Stop that!" Fadl shouts, horrified; he pulls Zainab onto her back and takes her by the shoulders, covering her face in kisses. "I've sworn to protect you, my lady," he murmurs, wiping her smeared kohl with his thumbs. "And before you say it, yes: I am an old man. But I am not just any old man, and neither is Jaffar: you have seen his magics. You have seen what he is capable of."

She searches his eyes. "Against a holy man with great powers, I am told. And what about the witch-queens of China?"

Fadl raises his eyebrow. "Is that the talk of a shieldmaiden, a berserker? Do you think they do not fear _you,_ the winter-eyed devil? And here, I thought Zainab of Samarkand considered herself a queen among women! But now, you cower like a slave girl, resigned to her fate."

"Don't talk to me like that!" she snaps. "You have not been through what I have been through." 

Fadl sighs and lets go of Zainab's arms, yet lies down beside her and keeps his arm wrapped around her. "I do not belittle it," he says in a voice more quiet, now. "Know that should anything happen to you, I, too, would go mad. Your berserkers would blanch at what I would--" he growls in his throat, squeezing his hand into a fist; there is a cold, dark flash of madness in his eyes that chills her bones. "Do you know what the Shaykh said to me, the very first day I visited the monastery?"

"That you were a madman? _Everyone_ knows you are a madman," she scoffs, yet deep inside her heart, she hates herself for letting such spite poison her words, just when she needs the shelter of his love the most. Yet Fadl always exasperates her so that she cannot help herself; he brings out the harridan in her.

Fadl frowns, not at all amused--yet he refuses to take her bait, refuses to reduce this to a petty argument; that much, he has learned in his spiritual studies. "'A madness barely kept in check,' the Shaykh said," he murmurs coolly, steadily. "When I have fought my lower self for years, now; decades. Just like you, I wanted to say to him: 'you have not been through what I have been through,' for he had never known war as I know it, I could tell. Yet I sensed something in him..." he shakes his head. "He is not an ordinary man, the Shaykh. When he looks at you, it's as if your flesh has become but a vessel of glass, inside of which he can see your soul down to its tiniest compartments, its qualities displayed as if in a transparent cabinet: all its beauties and its uglinesses, all its well-developed virtues and its cancerous growths, sores."

"Like Jaffar, then?" she whispers. It's as if Fadl had described the exact effect Jaffar's gaze has upon people.

He nods. "Something like that. But I am also a man stubborn, and would not give the Shaykh peace until he accepted me as one of his students. He said I was like unto an animal, but I pressed him like a bull, and finally, he agreed to take this bull by the horns."

"But that doesn't make sense. Why would he, then, choose to teach all those angry young fools, if even a man of your age and your experience was to him little more than an animal?"

"Do you know, I'm still trying to get to the bottom of that myself," he laughs wryly. "I'm sure there's more to this intrigue than we think; I'm going to ask Jaffar to come and visit the monastery with me, so that we can find out. But what I mean to say is," and he kisses her cheek, "that despite your fear, my lady, have faith in the sons of Barmak. If you cannot have faith in my anger, then have faith in Jaffar's magic, at least," he says and takes his hand to Zainab's sex, caressing it with a gentle hand. "Even if the entirety of Samarkand should fall, he, Yassamin and Latifa can surely summon up enough magic to cast a protective spell over all our houses, for all time."

"I forgot about Latifa," Zainab mumbles, absent-minded, parting her legs despite herself; how these Barmakid dogs can always undo her so well with their hands, she doesn't know. 

"You must forget everything right now," Fadl tells her, leaning over her and gazing deep into her eyes. "Remember how you asked the same thing of me last year, when Balkh fell?"

She searches his eyes, indeed remembering how she had practically beaten him into thinking of nothing but love, nothing but herself until he could get back to Balkh, lest he go insane from grief. "I do," she says and wraps her arms around his neck. "Make me forget," she says, tears springing up into her eyes, she now turning her voice husky as she opens her body to Fadl once more. "Make me forget," she hisses as Fadl begins to push inside of her, too fast, but now she needs the pain, wants to be dissolved by it like the fakirs; "make me forget, you son of a dog!" she cries as Fadl truly begins to drive into her, so hard and deep the bed creaks.

And he knows that she knows that this is a banishing magic, him ravishing her so that others cannot, making her his so completely she could never, ever be claimed by another; he taking her so brutally, wildly, violently that in doing so he is carving his memory into her flesh forever. So violently does he beat his hips into her, with such love that no other man could ever reach as deep inside of her, not possessing her love that now allows him deeper than any man's prick could reach unloved; so hard does he bite her tongue and her lips that no stolen kiss or forced suck could ever banish his memory from her mouth, he tattooing her flesh with his passion; so does he feed her with those love-blows she now begs from him that any worse beatings would kill her. And by then, she would have won, won: having escaped her violator into death and into Fadl's arms, awaiting her on the other side of time. 

"On the other side of time," she sobs into his shoulder as he takes her and he takes her; "promise me you'll wait for me, wait for me, wait for me," she moans as she bends double underneath his thrusts.

"I promise, promise, promise," he moans in turn, his hips jerking out of rhythm as his fury and his heat rise in one spiral up his spine; his seed rising, his gall rising, all of him rising towards her, her, her. "I would tear through time, tear through the gates of Hell or Paradise, ride all the way to Valhalla to hold you in my arms," he roars: a terrible, damning blasphemy from the lips of a Muslim. 

Delirious, he sobs into her shoulder, she laughing a madwoman underneath him; she clutches him with her arms and her legs, her own body spasming with his in time. He rocks into her, carried by her weight, by the sea of her flesh, drenched in the sweetness of her sweat; even in the last throes of his undoing does he drink in the moans of her release, her kisses bitter from wine and tears. 

Yet they are the sweetest of kisses, for they are Zainab's, Zainab's. So violently does she now draw her claws up his back that she must be drawing blood, yet he only laughs at this, laughs; for with it, he is signing this pact of love that will surely triumph over history, over religion, over death.


	5. Chapter 5

***

**Afrasiyab**

**Night**

***

"I _told_ you this is what would happen if you let the unbelievers get their hands on paper!" Mohammad moans underneath his breath as he and Jaffar make their way out of the palace via a secret corridor. "Revolt!"

"They are not unbelievers," Jaffar murmurs from underneath the tails of his turban, firmly drawn over his face in the Bedouin manner. "I know the sect Fadl speaks of. They're probably more orthodox about their practice than you or I."

"Ungrateful bastards," Mohammad nevertheless grumbles as their horses are handed to them by two beautiful stable boys.

Two _exceptionally_ beautiful boys, in fact--and now, Mohammad pauses. Something is out of order. The youths are as pretty as eunuchs, the way they stand there: one holding the reins, another holding up a lantern, smiling at them.

No, not boys--they're both as pretty as girls, and those moustaches _have to_ be drawn on with musk--

And now, Mohammad's eyes fly wide in recognition. "La--!"

But Latifa is quick to press a finger to his lips, nodding to Yassamin standing beside her, both of them dressed as horse-grooms.

"Your steed has been saddled, my lord and master," she grins, clearly delighted at Mohammad's surprise, his expression now fast turning into one of admiration, and of a very lascivious kind at that.

"Does wonders for a marriage, a little bit of role-play," Jaffar grins underneath the tails of his turban, nudging Mohammad with his elbow. "Does it not, _boy?_ " he asks Yassamin in his most masterly voice, devouring her with his eyes.

Yassamin performs the most elaborate of court bows, staggering a little with the flash of heat Jaffar's voice has now lit in her hips. "Most certainly, my lord and master," she says, her cheeks glowing. "Come, my lords. All is ready."

***

It is under a light cloud of invisibility-magic--a trick to turn the eye, Jaffar explains--that they make their way to New Lesbos without attracting any attention. Astonished, Mohammad observes as even Zainab's hounds, tethered within the stables, remain asleep as their little party arrives, paying no heed to four people and two horses passing them by: it's only once they have reached the shabestan and Jaffar casts off the spell that they hear a few muffled noises of surprise from the dogs aboveground.

Zainab, attended to only by Lina, rushes in to kiss Mohammad's ring. "Champion of the Believers," she recites by habit.

"Yes, still excluding your good self, I see," Mohammad says wryly as he spies the Thor's hammer Zainab has hung upon her bosom for protection. "When can we expect you to submit?"

"When Fenrir breaks his chains," Zainab says with a charming smile and offers everyone a seat--this question of faith being an old game they play, Mohammad asking this every time they meet, Zainab always giving him the same reply. Even Mohammad but grins as all sit down in a circle of cushions, in the centre of which Jaffar places his crystal.

"She is more useful to us as a taxpayer," Fadl says. This statement, too, is one of habit: at a moment like this, Fadl, too, finds comfort in taking part in what's become a family tradition. As if Zainab's industries weren't enormously beneficial to the whole region to begin with, she pays more taxes due to her religion: the difference between what she pays as a pagan and what she would as a Muslim now equals the value of the rest of the city's produce for a year.

"Gentlemen! To business," Jaffar declares as Lina serves them all hot, sweet tea. "Ladies," he nods to the fairer sex. "Tell us everything."

Once again, Lina tells them all she knows; Fadl, in turn, fills in what he knows from his time at the monastery. When both have finished, all turn to Mohammad.

He sits there in silence for long moments, grave and still; finally, he gives a restless drum of his fingers upon his knee. "I don't like it," he says, wincing himself at the understatement he has just made. "I don't like it one bit."

"How many spies do you think there are in Afrasiyab?" Fadl asks quietly, himself never fond of visiting the court exactly because it's such a nest of intrigues, driven by power-lust and greed: everyone from vizier to slave girl is forever plotting something behind the others' backs.

Latifa snaps her tongue. "Slaves are easy to buy off. Out of my four hundred, at least a quarter must be spying for at least one, if not several masters and mistresses."

"Yes," Zainab says sarcastically and nods at Yassamin, "that's why this smug wench says she only keeps paid servants!"

"That's immaterial, now," Fadl says and waves his hand in irritation; Zainab always has a bad habit of veering off the subject at hand. "Jaffar, you've been there for the past two weeks; you're a neutral observer and may have noticed things others don't." Even at Harun's court the Barmakids had used this tactic--of inviting someone new to the court to pay careful attention to all the courtiers and slaves, for they would often notice peculiar details, words, gestures the people who'd dwelt there for years would've become blind to. "Have you noticed anything unusual?"

Jaffar laughs dryly. "You know me, brother mine--I suspect _everyone._ Therefore, I've cast a silencing spell over our rooms as often as possible, similar to the one we used on our way here tonight. The problem with such a spell, however, is that it works in both directions--no one can hear you speak, but you cannot hear others either. I've lived in blissful ignorance for the most part, I have to say. What about you, my love?"

"I do not question Latifa's calculations at all," Yassamin says quietly, gazing at her tea glass. It's the harems that are the most dangerous part of any large court, ambitious women not hesitating to maim or slay their competitors with poisons, acids, knives to clear the path for themselves into the rulers' bedchambers. "There was that horrid episode with the Circassian girl who lost all her hair when her soap was replaced with--"

"Let us not speak of her!" Latifa cries, raising a shuddering hand. "That was a private feud. I know the woman who engineered that, and she will spread her legs to whomever holds power--but she is incapable of putting a man on the throne. Myself, I suspect the enemy is far nearer--I suggest we look at the ghilman. The bodyguard," she adds, that term being used of pages and grooms of all kinds, but the slave-soldiers that form the rulers' elite guards are the most notorious of all who fall under that designation. Just as the Praetorian guards who had stabbed the emperors they should have been guarding, so have the ghilman, youths both beautiful and terrible, dispatched sultans and even Caliphs.

"It's always the bodyguard," Fadl rolls his eyes. "But that's something all rebels know--that it's the ghilman who will be rounded up first and," he makes a throat-slitting gesture, "replaced. They already know that it's the ghilman we will be investigating first."

"Which gives them all the more reason to act impulsively, given that they rub shoulders with death every day," Jaffar says. "Yet you do not seem convinced?" he asks Fadl.

"No. I haven't seen a single ghulam at the monastery, for a start. Which, of course, does not prove anything--Mohammad may very well be sheltering a pretty viper or two underneath his wing," he says, Mohammad gifting him with a furious glare at the insinuation.

Nevertheless, Mohammad remains silent, knowing how likely it is that Fadl speaks the truth; therefore, Fadl continues uninterrupted, his voice now rising in despair. "It's just as I'd feared. All of us but sit here and speculate, agreeing only on one thing: that there are traitors everywhere! Enough talk, my friends; we must act quickly, to chase them out of their holes."

"But not too rashly, brother-in-law!" Latifa says, raising her hand. "When is the next prayer-meeting at the monastery?"

"Tomorrow," Fadl says, then glances at Jaffar's crystal. "I thought we were supposed to use that trinket of yours?"

Jaffar raises his eyebrow. "When we can decide what to point it at. I doubt the one place will be enough; we would need to be looking at several places at once, or at least in rapid succession. I haven't needed to attempt scrying on such a scale before. However, I think I have an idea..."

"Yes?" Mohammad asks impatiently as Jaffar begins to rummage inside of his satchel.

"Well, the stars aren't right, but..." Jaffar says and lifts out a stack of copper plates and a stylus from his bag. "It _is_ possible to create a talisman by which one can see into a specific place for longer than the usual few moments that suffice for ordinary scrying--to build a permanent gateway to that place, as it were. Engrave the talisman during the right astrological times, with the right symbols to charge it with specific powers, then bury it in the designated place; after this, it should act as a window of sorts, if you will, into that place and its goings-on." He pauses and looks up at Yassamin and Latifa, who aren't as convinced. "In theory."

"And only in the hour of Mars, with Aries in ascendant," Latifa sighs.

"Or when Leo and Mars join forces, should you wish to become king," Fadl scoffs as Jaffar begins to sharpen his stylus. "That's what all the superstitious old fools say," and now Fadl begins to imitate Khurshid's mournful voice. "Begin preparations for war when the Sun sojourneth in Mars, when behind him standeth Jupiter--"

"Saturn," Jaffar corrects him.

"Whatever miserable old heathen god the fire-worshippers wished to placate!" Fadl groans. "How do we know they aren't casting the exact same spells against us this very moment? Hmm?" he looks around at everyone. "How do we know they haven't placed these," he waves his hand at a talisman Jaffar is now engraving with a loupe in his eye, "all over Afrasiyab?"

Latifa shakes her head. "I would have sensed them, brother-in-law. I keep an eye on such things."

"Even outside the harem?" Mohammad now says, suspicious--he has never quite got the hang of Latifa's magical practices, and has preferred not to discuss them much, so as not to be turned into a newt. "How about the stables?"

Latifa glances at her disguise and laughs. "I can survey it all when we get home, just to make sure."

"You engrave that one, my lady," Jaffar mumbles and hands Latifa a stylus and a plate. "It's for the harem. You know its ruling celestials better than I."

"But you yourself said now wasn't the right time," Zainab finally interrupts, having remained silent throughout most of this conversation. Appropriate ritual times, however, are something she _can_ understand. "What if none of them will work?"

Jaffar drops the loupe from his eye and grins at her. "Their effectiveness also depends on the maker's sincere and honest faith," he says and nods at Latifa. "With such a shaykha on our side, her baraka will most certainly be enough to awaken even the slumbering heavenly bodies."

Mohammad rolls his eyes. "And to throw the stars into disarray if we're not careful!" he cries.

"Thank you," Latifa bows ironically, taking this as the roundabout compliment it is. She knows that for all his grumblings, Mohammad has a grudging respect towards her spirit-gifts; he holds them in as high an esteem as any pious man would, even fearing them slightly. At times, he has confessed to Jaffar that he feels as if Latifa is his good luck charm, his amulet, his _farrah_ : the halo of dominion and majesty the Simurgh once bestowed upon Persia's ancient kings. That's why he's always treated her well, better than his other wives or concubines: to scorn his favourite queen would be to scorn good fortune itself, and as all fortune comes from God--well. To be ungrateful of His gifts would be nothing less than blasphemy.

"What _are_ the stars doing this very moment?" Lina asks, peering at the several open calendars, almanacs and star-maps Jaffar has laid out between himself and Latifa. The calendars have long tables and lists of planets Jaffar is now comparing against one another, using a little measuring rod and an astrolabe to calculate their relations--how he has managed to find out the sun's exact position within the darkness of the shabestan, Fadl does not know; he expects him to be but bluffing in any case.

"It's called memory, brother mine," Jaffar murmurs, having picked up this thought from Fadl's mind. "We're in luck; Mercury isn't retrograde," he says when he finishes one of these calculations, peering from the astrolabe onto the tablet he's working on at the moment--a very powerful one for the monastery, engraved with the image of Jupiter and various religious signs. "And Aries is still above the horizon."

"And at least none of the stars are burning," Latifa mumbles, with her finger on an almanac of her own. "If we do this quickly enough, that is; when the sun rises, it'll swallow whatever's left of Mars's influence--if there's any left, since it's already Friday."

"Can you repeat that, but in Arabic?" Fadl bewails, exasperated.

"Zainab, show him the influence of Friday," Jaffar says, without looking up from his tablet.

Laughing, Zainab gets up and hugs the still-sitting Fadl so that his face is entirely buried into her vast bosom, his complaints muffled within its depths. " _That,_ even I know," she says as she finally lets go. "Friday is the day of Venus, my fool of a stallion. That's why all the astrologers say Love swallows up all evil in Her embrace on Fridays." She turns to look at Jaffar. "But would that not be beneficial for our purposes?"

"No, no," Jaffar says, still not looking up from his tablet--upon which he has just drawn an image of Mars triumphant, stepping over a dragon and strangling it with his bare hands. "Protective magic must be fierce. Our enemies would show us no mercy; therefore, we must be forceful. Here," he says and hands the talisman to Fadl. "Keep it close to your heart; focus all your rage upon it, all of that within you that is of the warrior," he says, chuckling. "Since it's _your_ fury we're talking about, that should charge it most abundantly with the right sort of energy--for when we install it in Afrasiyab."

"It even looks like you!" Zainab cries as she sits down next to Fadl, who is now examining the talisman with suspicion. "Look," she says and pokes at the figure of Mars with a plump fingertip, giving it a little tickle underneath its pointed beard-tip. "He's given him your nose."

"This had better work, brother," Mohammad mumbles as he examines his own, meant for his throne room: a talisman with an enthroned king upon it, a lion watching his back.

"What about me?" Lina asks, still peering over Jaffar's shoulder. "Aren't you going to give me a talisman?"

"Well, is it possible for you to go back to the paper mill safely?" Jaffar asks, looking from her to Zainab and back again. "I would not take too great a risk."

"I think so," Lina says. "I can tell them I lost a bracelet."

"Must you, mouse-mouse?" Zainab asks, ignoring the flash of jealousy in Fadl's eyes as she ambles over to Lina in turn, restless in her anxiety.

"I'll be fine," Lina says and rests her head on Zainab's shoulder, taking her hand.

"God willing," Yassamin interjects quickly, whispering a prayer. "I vote that my sister, Zainab and I remain with the crystal while Lina and the men go to work outside. That way, we can immediately ascertain whether the magic windows work or not. Zainab, have you got any large gems upon yourself, or any especially fine mirrors?"

"But of course I do!" Zainab huffs--only now does Yassamin remember Zainab counts a glass factory among her many enterprises. "Why?"

Yassamin looks at Jaffar, who is still absorbed with engraving Lina's talisman. "I mean that--husband? Are you thinking what I am thinking?"

"I think so," he says, finally looking up, pointing his stylus in all six directions. "That each window we create with the talismans should have a crystal or mirror of its own for us to scry it from, yes? I suppose it only depends on whether you really think you can maintain that many energy-streams at once."

"Not all by myself," Yassamin says, "but if we do it together, each one of us maintaining a separate one, we should be able to look into several different places simultaneously. It'd be easier than trying to look at all of them through but the one crystal, constantly having to switch between destinations. Besides, we cannot risk breaking our crystal by focusing so many streams of energy upon it all at once! Thus, it stands to reason we should try and split the energy between several reflective surfaces."

"You're right," Jaffar says, tapping his lip with the stylus. "I hadn't thought of that. Well, then," he spreads his hands, "by all means."

"As long as we do _something!_ " Mohammad cries in despair. "What am I to do?"

"Behave as you always do, my love," Latifa says, petting his shoulder. "Let them think that we know nothing about their plans. With that in the throne room and this," she holds up her own talisman, with Venus and Mercury engraved upon it to denote both women's quarters and Latifa's own magics, "in the harem, they will soon have told us everything we need to know before they realise it."

"I hope to God you're right," Mohammad mumbles, staring at his talisman. "May He have mercy upon us all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the bottom of my notes post for this fic, [here,](https://snowgrouse.livejournal.com/2569977.html) for some information about the ghilman.


	6. Chapter 6

***

**The House of the Most Noble Brotherhood of The Warriors of The True Faith**

**Friday evening**

***

As Jaffar and Fadl arrive at the monastery, the sunset prayers are drawing to a close. The brothers enter quietly, while others are still absorbed in their prayers, Jaffar surveying the building with eyes both physical and spiritual to find its most important parts, parts most crucial to their mission. Installing the talisman here will not be easy, considering it will have to lie in a spot from which it can see everything that happens--accomplishing this, without the talisman itself being seen by all eyes, is the most difficult task of all.

The building itself is humble, constructed of mud brick plastered white; as it functions mostly as a prayer room, it's the size of an average family house, and can hold perhaps forty devotees at most. It's not the first time Jaffar has been to such a place--in fact, he has visited the holy houses of all religions in his studies--but now, in order to find out more about the sect, he pretends ignorance.

In his Baghdad-style garb, he looks around quizzically, acting much like the average Muslim would: one wary of monasticism the way the Prophet himself was, regarding it as something all true believers should steer clear of.

"And this, they prefer to family life?" he asks suspiciously.

"Oh, no," Fadl rushes in to explain, quick to embrace his role as guide. "This is not like the monasteries of the unbelievers, brother mine," he says with genuine fondness and pride. "The brothers only come here to pray and to remember God in different ways--singing, dancing, contemplating His Beauty and His Majesty. They return to their families afterwards, never relinquishing the sacred family duties God has prescribed for them."

"There is no mortification of the flesh, then?" Jaffar asks playfully. "Or over-exciting it? No wine-drinking, no contemplation of beautiful boys to--"

"We are no Qalandars, sire," a stern voice, clearly unable to take a jest, speaks to Jaffar from behind. "With whom do we have the honour?"

Both brothers turn around to find themselves face to face with a tall, young man: he is wearing a coarse, white woollen robe with the overlong sleeves characteristic of the dress of the Chinese. Immediately, Jaffar can tell that this is someone who has assumed stewardship of the place, even if he looks far too young to be the Shaykh himself: he seems barely twenty, if that. His eyes are piercing, keen and dark, with a cold and hard gaze in them that Jaffar is all too familiar with: the fervent, yet at the same time introverted look of a man who has made up his mind and closed it. This man only looks within, only keeps company with his own unshakeable beliefs; no amount of reason or tenderness can melt this glaze.

 _Harun had that look,_ Jaffar thinks: yet, before this realisation even unveils itself fully in his conscious mind, his body has reacted to the man with the same kind of battle-shock as it had done whenever he'd seen that look in Harun's eyes. Like a warrior when he is startled--even by a pigeon--a cold, ugly rush now runs through Jaffar's entire being, and it's as if a stony hand crushes his innards; his body straightens itself out and braces itself for violence.

This does not escape Fadl; with the skill borne of long viziership, he moves in to charm the man they now, with good reason, suspect to be their Dimna. "This is my brother, Fahd ibn al-Sayyad," Fadl says, giving the man the false patronymic by which he himself has gone at the prayer-meetings. "He is a Friend of God, and an eminent astrologer besides. I told him of the baraka one could feel radiating from the walls of this house, and he wanted to experience it for himself."

Jaffar gives his salutations with a respect bordering on the sarcastic, enough for Fadl to flash his eyes at him in warning as he turns to introduce the young man in turn. "This is Atesh ibn--"

"Titles do not matter here," the youth interrupts Fadl tersely, "nor do lineages," he continues in a smoother fashion and salutes Jaffar, giving him a condescending smile. "Here, one's tribe or colour matters not: we are all as brothers before God."

"God is great," Jaffar says in agreement; already he has noted the man's mixed ancestry, obviously something of a sore point--to put it mildly. Before their arrival here, Fadl had indeed told Jaffar one of the Brotherhood's more fervent preachers, a man born of a Chinese mother, was called Atesh _ibn Abi_ when his back was turned--'Son of His Father,' meaning the identity of his father was unknown.

It had not, then, been difficult for Jaffar to imagine the tragic circumstances of his conception, or to extrapolate from that an equally tragic childhood with a mother who had not wished to bear him, who had in her child's face seen but the face of her violator every day for the rest of her days.

This is a young man born of violence, nursed with the bitter milk of loathing, with a mind to avenge himself upon the world--but Arabs and their allies first and foremost. Already Jaffar knows that this man's sermons are full of exhortations to drive out those whom he calls the invaders; it is his firm faith that even the meekest and mildest of them is an oppressor in disguise. For in private, Atesh had told Fadl what he calls the cold, hard truth: if one is born into an oppressor race--such as the Persians who sold the Sogdians out to the Arabs--one is forever tainted by his privileged station and that's that. A man with a tyrant's blood running through his veins is incapable of goodness; despite any protestations he may make, he is forever striving to but rob and enslave. Just as a wolf cannot become a lamb, his nature allows him nothing else. Thus, no attempts at reconciliation, no partnerships with these people should be made: such follies are the resort of weaklings and fools.

"However," Jaffar continues cheerfully. "I have heard tell of a great Shaykh among you, a man of whom I was told--well," he throws Atesh a challenging glance, "That listening to him was like unto listening to the prophets of old. Even if my brother is not _quite_ so old as to have witnessed those days," he says, ignoring Fadl's glares. "I do wonder what his basis of comparison is," he murmurs half to himself, affecting a typical philosopher's absent-mindedness.

"You speak of Him who is the Heart of The Faith," Atesh says gravely, tucking his hands into his overlong sleeves. "He is indeed one of those of whom the Holy Qur'an said: 'Verily, they who pledge unto thee their allegiance, pledge it unto none but God. The Hand of God is above their hands.' Brothers, I would be most glad to arrange for you an audience with Him, to banish any doubt from your mind as to His greatness. But I am afraid He is very ill at the moment, and I couldn't possibly presume--"

"Peace be with you, brothers," a quiet, calm, but exceptionally firm voice calls out from behind them.

"My lord and master!" Atesh cries, prostrating himself fully upon the floor.

Indeed, the curtain to the private quarters has been drawn, and in the doorway stands an old man: one bent with age as he leans upon his staff, but with eyes as sharp as an angel's.

To his surprise, Jaffar is reminded of his own mother: the Shaykh's eyes flicker with that rare pale blue djinn-fire Ettabeh, and Jaffar himself, had been famous for--and feared for. Indeed, in the darkness of the lamplit room, this man's eyes seem to glow with their own light, brighter than his white turban or the lantern he is now lifting with his right hand; immediately, Jaffar realises exactly why this man is so greatly revered.

Revered or not, the Shaykh nevertheless seems to not care much for Atesh's crawling; he but glances wearily at the still-prostrating youth, finally dismissing him with a nudge of his staff.

As the dejected Atesh leaves to bid goodbye to the other guests, the Shaykh beckons to Fadl and Jaffar without a word, like any grouchy old man faced with unexpected visitors but grudgingly complying with the all-important custom of hospitality.

This but amuses Jaffar. Once they are free of Atesh and enter the Shaykh's private quarters, the atmosphere immediately turns warmer and he finds himself relaxing a little, even while remaining inquisitive and cautious. Again, it's like the old days in Baghdad, he thinks, but now the memories are of a more pleasant sort--for is this not like those times Yahya had invited his sons to his house for an intimate talk?

 _Whom do you see in him?_ Jaffar asks Fadl telepathically, smiling a little as they bow their way through a low doorway into a room that seems to serve as the Shaykh's bedchamber, kitchen and study all at once. _Which one of them did you seek in him, and find? Mother or Father?_

Fadl starts, not accustomed to thoughts being so projected into his head. _Stop doing that,_ he thinks at Jaffar as they sit down on the cushions the Shaykh offers them; he is not sure just how many of his thoughts Jaffar can read, but he knows Jaffar is listening out for this response. _My thoughts are mine own. Besides, it tickles; it feels like you're whispering in my ear from the inside._

"It's a little bit of both," the Shaykh says over his shoulder from his cooking alcove. " _I am both the mother and the father,_ " he recites from an old mystical prayer as he sprinkles oil on two flatbreads, which he now offers to Jaffar and Fadl.

Jaffar stares at him in wide-eyed astonishment; the Shaykh but smiles at him gently and nudges him with the tray. "There is no need for that kind of mind-to-mind nonsense, my sons," he says, then springs back towards his cooking alcove. "But I forget my sumac! A moment."

"I must apologise most sincerely," Jaffar says as the Shaykh returns, sprinkling sumac on Jaffar's bread with one hand while pouring milk into Fadl's cup with the other, dextrous despite his advanced age. "It is not often that one meets a genuine saint," he says with a true, boyish wonder, yet analysing the old man with the curiosity of a natural philosopher. "So long have I searched, so far and wide, yet few there are those one can genuinely call true Friends of God. I am most humbled, and grateful for being so blessed with the grace of a true master."

The Shaykh but winces a little. "It's a cheap trick, mind-reading; like all miracles are. A true Friend of God knows this, too, and refrains from such displays, except in emergencies," he says and waves a bony finger in Jaffar's face. "For he knows that those men who only seek miracle-makers for their masters, or those who only embark on a spiritual quest to acquire magical gifts, are forever led astray by those desires. God Himself leads them to perdition as punishment for their foolishness."

"Very true," Fadl smirks into his beard, unable to resist the chance to needle Jaffar a little. "My little brother here thought himself quite the magical adept in his youth. I am glad to report he got better! He would not be here with us today, had he not acquired a little more wisdom in his advanced years."

"Yet it is you, my bull, who in me have sought the father, while he has grown into his wisdom through his own fatherhood, through tending to his own family," the Shaykh says calmly, folding a woollen blanket over his legs.

When Jaffar looks at him askance, wondering how he knows this, the Shaykh looks from him to Fadl and back again as if this were obvious for anyone to see. "A trace of a woman's perfume upon his shoulder, a bracelet clearly strung together by a child," he points out the clues by which he has sensed Jaffar to be a devoted family man, "and a loving calmness that can only come from a sexual desire sated and tempered by conjugal bliss. The feminine and the masculine in a most perfect balance--it's plain to see." Again, he winces, as if embarrassed. "Oh, but these are a charlatan's tricks, again--you must excuse me. Come, a man of your kind has no need for a teacher; you must be here for some other reason."

Jaffar and Fadl exchange glances. There seems to be no reason for them to lie to the Shaykh, for he would be able to read their minds no matter what. If the Shaykh wanted to harm them, he would have done so already; of this, both men are now certain.

Fadl glances around himself, then lowers his voice. "Are we being listened to?"

 _Perhaps,_ the Shaykh speaks to them both through their minds, startling Fadl so that he nearly inhales his milk.

 _It concerns Atesh, I take it?_ The Shaykh asks.

Jaffar, now extremely serious, picks up the Shaykh's gaze with his. _We do not know,_ he speaks to both him and Fadl, now staring deep into the Shaykh's eyes. _But you must help us. Do you know of any specific plans, plots against the sultan that could have been brewing here?_

 _I aim not to involve myself in worldly matters, especially politics,_ the Shaykh says firmly, _and that is exactly why Atesh concerns me. He brings too much of the world into the prayer room._

 _How do you mean?_ Jaffar asks.

The Shaykh leans in closer, as if he were speaking to them audibly. _He is a hypocrite, of the worst kind--the true religion preaches the equality of all men, yet Atesh would divide them._

 _Then why do you allow him to preach here?_ Fadl wonders, not even voicing this as a question, yet all hear it.

 _I was a fool to take him underneath my wing,_ the Shaykh says and shakes his head. _Yet how can one who sees the presence of God everywhere ever turn anyone away? He has a soul, like any other man. I thought to rescue him from the war in his mind, to help him forgive those who had done him wrong; to take that blazing fire in his soul and use it to cook him, so that he'd be ready for Paradise._

 _Cook him?!_ Fadl sputters inside, before he can mask his reaction.

 _It's a mystical metaphor,_ Jaffar thinks and rolls his eyes. _That the spiritually poor are 'raw' and that it is the heat of God's love that cooks them until they are done, soft and tender and pliant._

 _Exactly,_ the Shaykh nods. _But Atesh chose to take that fire and turn it towards this world, focusing upon this life and not the next. He would burn the whole world to avenge the wrongs he's been wrought. But I noticed this too late... as you can see, I have been ill, ill for many months. The brothers kept coming and they were happy, and joyous songs filled the air. What reason had I to worry?_

 _He is right,_ Fadl says. _It was not until the last month or so that Atesh's sermons started to concern the outside world. I feared the worst, then; that they were plotting against Mohammad--_

\--yet now, he pauses, as he has now inadvertently revealed his true identity to the Shaykh by thinking of the sultan as his brother.

The Shaykh but smiles gently. _Continue, sons of Yahya._

Fadl sighs. _I have not been here every day. What have you yourself heard, master? Tell us everything, I beg of you. What has brought about this change in Atesh?_

 _Yes?_ Jaffar thinks. _If this change in him was so sudden, and if he is now planning something as outrageous as a coup, someone or something must've given him reason to believe he could accomplish his plans. The Tang?_

The Shaykh spreads his hands and shrugs. _It pains me to even think of it. There have been many more Chinese lads here lately; that much I know. They have spoken in hushed whispers among themselves--I must confess that God, in His wisdom, has not given me the gift to understand all tongues just yet._

 _Yet you have the gift of reading minds,_ Jaffar thinks and raises his eyebrow. _I have made something,_ he thinks and now pulls out the talisman he'd engraved for the monastery. _Together with my crystal, this talisman can tell us whatever is happening, whatever is being spoken in the place it is installed in, even if we were a hundred miles away. We thought to install it here without your permission, but I see that we were fools to ever assume we could succeed with such a plan. You have been as merciful and as kind as the Almighty Himself with the way you have treated us with such understanding; thanks to your grace having so lightened our hearts, I now feel like I can ask you a question._

 _A favour, you mean?_ The Shaykh asks. _If it is God's will..._

Jaffar lays the talisman in the Shaykh's hand. _Thanks to your gift of seeing into men's hearts and minds, it might be possible for us to see into them, too--through this. While we remain safely within our homes, and while Mohammad remains in Afrasiyab. Were we to accomplish this, we might be able to stop whatever they're planning. Who knows if this were similar to what has been happening in China thanks to An Lushan, with hundreds of thousands, millions killed for nothing? With your help, we might be able to save Samarkand from a similar fate, save thousands of lives. The lives of men, women, children; to ensure God's hand remains extended in blessing over this country. For you know as well as we do that it's the Barmakids who have been the very shadow of that hand, having worked so hard for the past half-century to maintain the peace and prosperity of this land._

The Shaykh squeezes the copper plate in his hand so tightly it bites into his flesh, his gnarled fingers trembling around it. He gazes deep into Jaffar's eyes, the light in his own shining ecstatic, high and bright--it is the look of a spontaneous enlightenment of knowledge, of lightning-bolt realisation; it's the look of a man who has found something he has been looking for. And it occurs to Jaffar that this might be the sort of divine quest the Shaykh has been searching for, waiting for for his entire lifetime: a final test of his faith, a chance to prove himself in God's eyes.

"It shall be done," the Shaykh murmurs, trembles, with tears in his eyes, yet his voice is like a child's, his eyes bright; gently, he whispers the prayer of all new beginnings. "In the name of God, the most merciful, most clement--"

The Shaykh closes his eyes, opens his tunic and presses the talisman to his heart.

There is a white flash, a flame, bright: then, the sickening, sweet smell of burning flesh as the talisman embeds itself in the Shaykh's very chest, resting over his breastbone, nestled against his heart.

Fadl thinks he might be sick, shivering at the sight; he swallows, whimpering a little in his throat. He stares and stares at the Shaykh's unmoving form: still, the old man remains serene, calm, with his eyes closed and a gentle smile upon his lips. 

The talisman burns in his chest with a gentle glow; pulsing with his heartbeats, emitting a warm, golden light. Exactly as it was intended to work; only now, they have opened a door to a power much greater than they could have ever hoped for: not a door to a mere building but into the heart of a saint, through whom flows no other power than that of the Divine. 

Finally, with a helpless, shame-filled cry, Fadl falls onto his face and drowns the hem of the Shaykh's robe in tears, reverent kisses. "We do not deserve this grace, yet you yield it to us regardless," he says in awe; "forgive me for having been such a fool. Never have I known a master like yourself. Mercy, master. Mercy."

The Shaykh lets out a little laugh, finally opening his eyes. He squeezes Fadl's hand and brings it to his own lips, kissing it in gentle benediction. "You'd do well to look for your master right beside you, my son. It's your brother who is the messenger of angels, here, having finally brought to me that which I have been praying for for so long." He looks at Jaffar gently, kindly, intoxicated from joy. "But I shall say no more. Do what you must, my children, and hurry: let us not tarry in our enacting of God's Will, that fate which He has written for each of us in His book."

"Amen," Jaffar says, prostrating himself and kissing the Shaykh's seat in utmost humility, himself overflowing with tears of gratitude and awe. "God is great."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doodle of Fadl and Manwhore!Jaffar flirting at Suleyman and Aloui at the baths [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/172441253488/a-taste-of-things-to-come-in-roses-23-jaffar-and)

***

**Samarkand**

**The Royal Baths**

***

Now that the Barmakids have Afrasiyab, the monastery, the great bazaar and even the paper mill under surveillance, only the very heart of Samarkand's society now remains for them to infiltrate: namely, the bath-house.

There are almost as many bath-houses in the city as there are mosques, however, and the Barmakids cannot possibly install a talisman within each one: therefore, after some serious consideration, they decide to concentrate on three of the most important ones. The first being the dilapidated one in the old town where all the ruffians gather, so that the brothers can keep an eye on the city's underworld; second, the one near the Baghdad gate that all the traders and the travellers favour, so that the brothers will be informed of all the latest news; and thirdly, the Royal Baths, affordable only to the city's elite--the one where the most powerful and the most power-hungry go not so much to bathe as to display their wealth.

This is the same bath-house at which Yassamin had first encountered Zainab, and it's the women who visit it regularly; therefore, it's they Jaffar and Fadl have to turn to in order to find out more about the place. Women in general know baths intimately, them being the only places in which they can move about freely, enjoy themselves and each other's company: women of all classes spend many hours or entire days at the biggest bath-houses, occupying themselves with entertainments, celebrations and diversions such as weddings, tea parties and the all-important gossip.

But Jaffar and Fadl have felt no such need for company; on the contrary, they have rather enjoyed their retirement from the hustle and bustle of the great courts they've had to spend most of their lives in, and are perfectly content with the company of but their own loved ones. That, and Jaffar's engineering skills having gifted their houses with the best bathing facilities anyone could possibly desire, Jaffar and Fadl have barely visited any of the city's public baths, unless invited there by someone else. Therefore, they are strangers to the patrons of the Royal, too; thanks to them usually turning their noses up at new faces-- _wretched climbers!_ \--and ignoring them entirely, Fadl doubts anyone will pay them too much attention.

Fadl picks at his gray and brown robe, a hopelessly plain affair, not at all like the fashionable, flattering cuts and sumptuous fabrics he is used to wearing. "We'll blend into the surroundings with these, all right," he says mournfully and lifts his arm to compare it with the mud-brick wall they are now walking past. "It's the colour of loam! Aren't we supposed to look rich enough to afford entry?"

"Wait and see," Jaffar says and grins over his equally drab shoulder. "Besides, you look too conspicuous in your fineries and you know it." _We only need to impress them once we're inside,_ he tells Fadl telepathically, _and must not attract too much attention on our way. 'There goes Fadl the peacock,' they say whenever you pass by. When now, we're better off playing sparrow._

But now, they have arrived in the forecourt of the building. It's early morning and the place looks almost deserted; perfect for their plans. Swiftly, Jaffar draws a rune into the air and blows into his palm: a shimmering cloud of glittering, iridescent mist surrounds him for a moment.

To anyone observing them, he will have but sprayed on a cloud of perfume. Yet, as he turns to Fadl, his clothes are splendid, all rich brocades and jewels--but in addition to that, his face looks forty years younger.

"There," Jaffar grins and gives Fadl an elaborate court bow, his newly-black curls bobbing beside his cheeks. "A handsome young prince, freshly arrived in the city--"

"Son of a _bitch!_ " Enraged, Fadl grabs the front of Jaffar's robe, its illusory ornaments feeling so real they even cut into his fingers painfully. "Give me some of that!" he hisses under his breath, looking around himself furiously as they reach the front door, realising what he must look like: a plainly dressed man of sixty with a pretty, painted and bejewelled youth on his arm. "They'll think I'm your pimp!"

Jaffar blows into his palm, and a similar cloud of shimmering pearlescence surrounds Fadl. However, as they enter the mirrored antechamber of the bath-house, Fadl now sees a withered, stooped old man--seemingly near hundred--looking back at him from the nearest mirror.

"Very funny," he spits and stomps on Jaffar's toes, sending him yelping. "Quick, change me back before the master of the towel comes!"

Jaffar flicks his wrist and tosses out another cloud of magic, chuckling--this is like the old days! To avoid broken toes, however, he relents and directs the spell to turn Fadl the same age as he himself now appears: somewhere around twenty.

Once the master of the towel--a refined, well-groomed, dignified old eunuch--arrives, little does he know that he is now gazing upon that which Harun al-Rashid himself had taken counsel from in the days of yore: the two scions of the Barmakid clan, in the flower of their youth. His critical, discerning eyes that now rake the brothers from head to toe can only see two well-dressed gentlemen, and his fine nostrils flare a little as he assesses the quality of their perfumes, seemingly judging them expensive enough for him to allow these two admittance. As Jaffar lays an eyebrow-raising sum of money in his hand, the eunuch nods in approval to himself, then bows deeply, adopting a pleasant tone.

"This way, gentlemen," he says and leads the men to a private changing room, clearly one of the finest in a building consisting of nothing _but_ fine rooms.

For this bath-house boasts no ordinary cloakroom, nor are any of its dressing-rooms communal: here, if one so wishes, one can have the full bathing experience, with all its individual elements, in complete privacy. The entire building is a vast honeycomb of rooms, from one-person bathing cells to vast halls, great enough to accommodate large parties. One may choose to wash in private, but later have one's hands and feet hennaed while chatting in pleasant company, or vice versa; the barbers and beauticians and masseurs all buzzing between the different parts of the compound like bees in a hive. Only a strict segregation of the sexes is observed here, the men bathing in the mornings and the women in the afternoons. Even then, those rich enough to break this rule do so, and in flagrant delight: it's not rare to hear the rich laughter of a courtesan here on certain mornings when the patrons are not content with the services of mere washer-boys.

Only the high-vaulted hall of the great pool-room--built over a natural spring and surrounded by several shower-taps, washbasins and private, curtained resting-alcoves lining its walls--is an area where people truly mingle: this, the area the Romans would've called the _tepidarium,_ is where people come to see each other and be seen.

Therefore, it is in this great hall that Jaffar and Fadl plan to install the talisman, presently wondering how to accomplish that without being found out. It's easier said than done, even if it's early in the morning and the room has no more than half a dozen men in it, all relaxed from the steam-baths and massages they've enjoyed before finally arriving here to rest: most of them are cooling themselves on the marble benches, drinking tea and napping on the soft eiderdown beds of the private alcoves. The brothers had chosen this morning, the quietest of hours deliberately, as most men are still at prayers: the only ones bathing here are either not Muslims, or have lapsed badly enough to be here nursing off the effects of last night's drink.

"Over there," Fadl whispers and nods towards the elevated area at the end of the pool, a space reserved only for the richest of the rich, decorated with rich frescoes and stucco figures of frolicking nymphs: the very stage upon which Zainab displays her charms for other women to envy. It is lit by a half-moon window right above it, and more natural light coming in from the domed ceiling's little star-shaped windows besides. "Between the mural and the window should do it," Fadl whispers, looking nervously around himself, unable to stop adjusting the towel slung around his waist.

"Sit down," Jaffar whispers and smacks Fadl on the arse, taking his own advice on one of the marble benches lining the pool. "You're not exactly being inconspicuous."

"Neither are you," Fadl groans. "You haven't stopped _posing_ since we came here!" he grumbles and pokes Jaffar with his elbow as he catches him making eyes at yet another man. "What's gone into you, you madman? Are you in _heat?!_ "

"Perhaps, brother mine; perhaps," Jaffar purrs and sprawls against the back of the bench, relishing his newfound youth and beauty a languorous Narcissus. He leans back on his elbows and tilts his head against the cushions propped between the bench and the wall a coquette, letting his freshly-oiled, dark and full hair tumble onto his neck and shoulders as he lounges there. The length of his legs allows him to spread them in blatant offering, his towel--if you can call it that--of thin, translucent white cotton revealing more than it hides. Audaciously, Jaffar shifts so that now, the fabric loosens enough to cling damply to the full curve of his cock from above, also allowing any passersby a generous glimpse underneath.

Already, Jaffar has caught the eye of two men at least: two tall, well-built African gentlemen, noble in their bearing, sitting across from them in a corner and cradling glasses of some kind of black drink. Immediately, Fadl realises who these two must be: he had heard of a pair of Abyssinian princes who had recently arrived here to trade coffee, a drink still mostly unknown in this part of the Caliphate. Yet it is not a drink unknown to the Barmakids, Yahya always having been keen on sampling every new curiosity under the sun; once he'd found out about its invigorating properties and realised it allowed one to work late into the night, he'd immediately made it a staple of the civil servant class.

It is indeed the bitter fragrance of coffee that Fadl can now smell as emanating from the corner in which the men sit, but he is far more concerned with the looks the men are now casting his and Jaffar's way: he cannot quite tell if they are curious or hostile, sodomites often eliciting a response that's a mixture of both. His tart of a brother, too, should know better--it hadn't been just once that the young Jaffar had returned home with bruises _and_ ripped drawers after having taunted random strangers with his beauty.

"Are you out of your _mind?_ " Fadl asks Jaffar under his breath. "The bigger fellow is twice your weight."

Jaffar licks his lips. "Firstly, I want to find out why two princes would become coffee traders. Secondly, I know for a fact that they have just returned from China, and on their way here, they met with the same caravan that brought here the queen-fabric. They might be able to tell me if the situation at the border has changed."

"And thirdly, you want to hop on their big black cocks," Fadl groans. "Remember the last time you went too far with a man built like an ox? Hmm?" he now asks, clutching the bench, stiff from tension. "And it was _I_ who had to drag you out of the tavern and tend to your torn arse for weeks, with those hideous cypress drops!"

"And you still tried to stick it up me, despite the doctor's orders," Jaffar chuckles at the memory, the doctor's advice having been to not let the cypress oil anywhere near the genitals. Fadl, in his impatient youthful lust, had ignored this with disastrous consequences, the dimensions of which Jaffar now demonstrates with his hands. "It was the size of a gourd! And--"

"I was in _agony,_ you miserable trollop!" Fadl spits--his prick had indeed been swollen as if stung by a hundred wasps, all from but the one drop of cypress oil, and he had shuddered at the very sight of cypresses ever since. Even as he'd moved to his current house, Thousand Suns, he'd immediately had the cypresses lining the forecourt chopped down and had had more orange trees planted in their place.

But grumble as he might, Fadl has to admit Jaffar's charms are working upon him, too: indeed, Fadl is suffering a tumescence this very moment, his body having associated the very sight of his little brother with the promise of sex ever since their childhood.

Jaffar crosses his legs, making sure to do it slowly enough to tease the Abyssinians still casting curious glances in his direction. "I am also about to create us a diversion, so you can go and install the talisman. Look--now it's only the two of them and us," he says and gets up, stretching luxuriously, shamelessly displaying the lithe sinuosity of his body. With a perfectly measured slink of his hips, he now allows his towel to slide so low it is only held up by his hipbones and the root of his already-stirring cock. "Can you see the private alcove over there?" he whispers as he clasps his hands behind his head, his elbows pointed outwards. "That one?" he asks, pointing one elbow towards the most luxurious one of them all, the one with the most heavily brocaded curtain, behind which the Abyssinians are now retreating. "That one is Zainab's favourite; it's she who buys a new carpet for it every week and uses it herself first."

Fadl lets out a low whistle. Even from underneath the curtain, he can see it's an enormous and well-woven carpet, probably Armenian, costing more than what a skilled soldier would earn in a year.

"And all of this for but one week's use, before it's matted and ruined by mold," Jaffar grins, "and other things besides. I doubt even the carpets at the House of the Gazelles get this many... libations," he says and leers as he watches a beautiful young pageboy slipping behind the alcove's curtain, carrying various unguents, perfumes and oils upon his silvern tray.

When the boy emerges from behind the curtain once more, Jaffar sits down and beckons to him; he pulls out his washing bag and begins to rummage around in it.

Fadl rolls his eyes. "Let me guess. You are thinking of 'infiltrating' that very alcove. Just because that arse of yours is like a second stomach--"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I _am_ feeling a little peckish," Jaffar chuckles as he digs out the metal stylus with which he'd been engraving the talismans.

"Yes, my lord?" the pageboy asks with trepidation as Jaffar places a gold coin in his hand; he does not seem to be as pleased as an ordinary boy would be at receiving such an enormous gratuity. But then, knowing the perversions of the rich, Fadl can only guess at what sorts of abominations the boy is assuming Jaffar to be after.

The boy's unease has not escaped Jaffar's attention, either; now, he pats the boy reassuringly on the cheek. "Worry not, my son. It's not _those_ kinds of services I am after. But it would please me greatly if you took a message from me," he says and picks up an apple from the fruit bowl next to them, tossing it in his hand, "to those gentlemen in the alcove over there."

"To hear is to obey, master!" The boy says, visibly relieved.

"But a moment," Jaffar says. "Is this musk?" He asks and picks up one of the little perfume vials the boy is carrying upon his tray. The vials are miniature works of art in and of themselves, intricately crafted from gemstones, gold and glass.

"The finest Indian musk, sir," the boy replies with pride. "Completely unadulterated, undiluted and pure. Not a heart remains unstirred by its fragrance."

Jaffar holds the bottle up to the light, then opens it and sniffs the long glass dauber, his eyelashes falling to his cheeks and the muscles upon his face fluttering in delight as he inhales the famed aphrodisiac. A veritable shudder of sensual pleasure passes through him, hardening his nipples--why, Fadl can swear even his prick leaps underneath his towel as he takes in the fragrance!

"Exquisite," Jaffar finally murmurs. He takes the stylus and dips it into the musk vial as if it were an inkwell, then uses this to engrave a perfumed message onto the apple itself--a few lines of erotic verse, from what Fadl can see over Jaffar's shoulder.

"There we are," Jaffar says and places the apple upon the boy's tray. "Take this to those gentlemen over there, and let it be known that I am eager to hear their response," he says.

As the boy leaves, Fadl slouches back against the cushions and sighs. "You could have just cast a spell, you old tart. Or did you?"

"Only one of my natural charm, brother mine," Jaffar purrs and watches intently as the boy enters the alcove.

The curtain parts just long enough for Jaffar to see what he wants to see: one of the Abyssinians meeting his eyes with a pair of amused ones, in which flash hunger and sharp heat.

Jaffar raises his eyebrow and spreads his legs in invitation, query.

The man gives him a big, white, predatory smile, brings the apple to his mouth and _bites._

"Oh. My. _God,_ " Fadl sputters as the curtain falls down once more.

"Good luck," Jaffar twitters at Fadl a nightingale and sets off to court his Abyssinian roses.

"You're unbelievable," Fadl mutters and squeezes the talisman so hard it bites into his palm, trying to tell himself he is not jealous as he watches the slow sway of Jaffar's broad hips slinking towards the alcove.

But he mustn't waste time. As soon as the pageboy leaves once more, the entire hall is empty: it's now or never.

But how to scale the wall to place the talisman high enough? It should not be installed at people's eye level; then it would be noticed immediately. Quickly, Fadl looks around himself and curses under his breath when he realises he has to run across the hall to find the nearest stool so that he can reach the half-moon window. The stool itself is so rickety he fears falling and breaking his skull as he balances there, scraping his arms against the rough, frescoed plaster of the wall, grasping the stucco nymphs' abundant curves for support; yet he cannot even attach the talisman to the wall before he can remember the exact verses to bring it to life with.

He closes his eyes and thinks, thinks. Magic has never been his strong suit, to put it mildly, and the noises that now emerge from the alcove aren't helping his concentration at all. He hears Jaffar's voluptuous, harlot laughter; yet that laughter is immediately stopped, suffocated by what seems like an attack, or a man desirous, impatient in his lust--or perhaps, a little bit of both. Fadl's heart was pounding already, but now it springs into a gallop as Jaffar's fear rushes through his veins, too: the terror and the thrill, the risk inherent in anonymous encounters; a veritable aphrodisiac to the sodomite.

 _Oh, God. They are pouncing him._ Will Jaffar hear if Fadl tries to project a thought, or is he already too full of cock to hear? Fadl thinks hysterically. _Help me, brother!_ He thinks at him nevertheless, peering over the open top of the alcove, wherein he can just see the tops of the men's heads. _This is not my expertise. What was the rhyme I was supposed to say?_

 _Any rhyme will do,_ Jaffar's voice arrives in Fadl's head--and now, he can feel what Jaffar is feeling, too: a glorious abundance of warm, musky skin, hard muscle; kisses so hungry and so passionate, tongues so eager in their licking at his mouth that now, Fadl's own prick leaps in time with Jaffar's.

 _You're joking!_ Fadl cries out even as he shivers there, as he feels the glide of two men's bodies against his skin, the two of them embracing Jaffar simultaneously, now; they are crushing him!--oh, but the audacity of it, the rush of it, the thrill--

 _I am not joking,_ Jaffar replies, and now, his mouth seems filled with something much bigger than a tongue--oh, but now, the son of a bitch is on his knees, fellating the two men at the same time! _Literally anything will do,_ he still manages to tell Fadl with his mouth full, _as long as it states your desire clearly, and rhymes._

Fadl bites his lip, trying to push Jaffar's sensations out so as to better concentrate on the task at hand; now, his own prick is so hard it'll soon knock him off the stool if he's not careful. 

For long moments, Fadl remains there in a state of despair, his forehead pressed against the wall; with his eyes, he seeks advice from one of the nymphs on the frescoes, but all she does is smile at him mysteriously.

 _Oh, to hell with it._ Fadl places the talisman above the nymph's head, presses it against the wall with his fingers and mutters the first verses he can come up with, hoping his sincere need and frustration will be enough to give the talisman the psychic push required to bring it to life.

 _"O, humbly do I thee implore_  
_O God the highest of all_  
_Gift us now the sight of this hall_  
_Even if my brother's a whore!"_

With a flash of white heat, the talisman embeds itself into the wall: Fadl nearly falls on his arse from surprise, and has to hold on to the breasts of a nymph to not keel over. He coughs as a cloud of noxious smoke emerges from where the metal has burned its way into the plaster; he has to fan and blow it off the talisman which is now glowing with a faint, golden shimmer. The image of the water-bearing lady engraved onto it begins to glow even brighter than the rest of the talisman, brighter, brighter--

\--until the figure herself dissolves, only to reveal Yassamin's astonished face.

"Oh, my," Zainab can be heard laughing behind Yassamin. Soon she, too, emerges into view, peering over Yassamin's shoulder and munching on a pastry, the cream filling of which has formed a veritable moustache over her lip. "Lina, bring the wine! Looks like we're in for quite the entertainments," she chuckles as Yassamin but keeps on staring past Fadl's shoulder, staring.

"I... I take it that you two can see inside of the alcove?" Fadl whispers, glancing quickly over his shoulder. "I can't stay here, talking to you like this. But tell me, is he all right?"

"More than all right," Yassamin murmurs sarcastically and raises her eyebrow. "Do you really wish to know?"

Zainab scoffs and waves her hand. "Don't be a prude, Yassamin! He's on all fours, being taken from behind by one fellow--the big one, with the shaven head--and now the other one... well!" she laughs and licks cream off her lips, again peering over Yassamin's shoulder. "It seems to me that the long-haired lad would rather be taken himself--he's now lying down on the bench facing them, legs open like so, and he's offering himself for Jaffar's mouth." She turns to Yassamin. "Do you reckon Jaffar hoped he'd get filled by them both at once?" she asks and makes a vulgar gesture, one suggesting an animal being roasted on a spit. "What a pity, to be so denied!" she laughs and tucks the remains of the pastry into her mouth. "Yes, I think this other fellow needs a good seeing-to," she says with her mouth full, wiping crumbs from her hands. "I think you'd better join them, my stallion!"

"Yes, if only for Jaffar's safety," Yassamin adds, but Fadl has seen the way her pupils have widened, now, and how her face is flushed from desire--oh, but he knows _exactly_ what the women will be getting up to once his and Jaffar's backs are turned.

Which leaves Fadl as the only person here who's not getting any amorous attention whatsoever--a gross injustice he should remedy forthwith. "Good luck," he whispers to the ladies as he climbs down and makes his way towards the alcove.

***

Despite what he'd felt earlier and despite what Zainab had told him, what Fadl now sees when he peers through the alcove's curtain is still a sight shocking in its lewdness, its disinhibition, its debauchery.

The three walls of the alcove are all lined with soft divans, two of which are now occupied by the Abyssinians and Jaffar between them. The older of the two men, the one who had accepted Jaffar's request, sits upon the divan facing the curtain, all of him the very opposite of Jaffar in build and character: he is enormously tall and muscular and dark, making even Jaffar--who now sits astride him, also facing the curtain--seem frail in his strong embrace.

Jaffar, now returned to the cheetah leanness of his youth, seems made of but bone and sinew: the lightness of his long, thin limbs and soft, feminine, bronze skin now balanced by the weight of the heavily muscled thighs upon which he now sits, the stranger's enormous arms like tree trunks that now grasp him tight, his giant hands that now tilt Jaffar's mouth back for hungry kisses. Even Fadl's coarse mind cannot help but poesy at the beauty of the vision: _A pard trapped in the branches of a tree, a tree of iron and of ebony,_ he thinks, marvelling at their embrace.

Indeed, the noises Jaffar now lets out are feline, too--only soft mewls, shocking in their fragility: he seems to be in pain as the man slowly lowers him down onto his glistening, oiled cock, Jaffar's thighs quivering as gravity forces him down onto its length. Jaffar looks almost like a child in his youthfulness, there, a child being brutally violated by an older man: even as Fadl reels there, light-headed from arousal, his hand around his own prick, he has to wonder if Jaffar is not making up for some violation of the past this very moment, now _choosing_ to be taken like this, when in his childhood, he had seldom been given the right to choose upon whom his young body was impaled.

Because that is exactly what it looks like: Jaffar's arse is completely distended, a shining red ring around the glistening dark stake upon which he is now impaled, the cruelty of the sight so arousing to Fadl that even he feels a little shame. But soon, that shame is drowned out upon the pulse upon pulse of heat that the sight sends to his prick: he can feel each and every beat of his heart in his cock, and now, he squeezes himself so hard that he lets out a hiss, one he doesn't realise is audible to the men in the alcove.

The curtain is pulled aside. The younger Abyssinian stands there, his long braids dishevelled, while Jaffar and the older man do not move from their positions.

"Aloui!" the larger man growls in indignation, looking at his friend and then at Jaffar.

"He is a friend," Jaffar croaks in explanation, although Fadl is not quite sure if the men speak much Arabic. "Fadl, this is Suleyman--"

The long-haired youth--Aloui?--looks at Fadl from head to toe, and the moment he spies Fadl's loincloth--and the size of the prick now tenting it--he grins widely. 

Without a word, he but whisks off Fadl's loincloth and wraps his hand around Fadl's cock, tugging upon it once, twice, thrice.

"Ah!" Fadl cries out, but it's no use: Aloui but pulls him inside the alcove by the cock.

Fadl stumbles, and has to balance his hands upon Aloui's shoulders so as not to fall, and in the tumult, Aloui laughs against his lips and pulls him into a friendly kiss. "Hello."

"Well. That's one way of going about it, I suppose," Fadl laughs against Aloui's mouth, his heart leaping at his large, sparkling, long-lashed eyes--eyes as blue as Jaffar's, an extraordinary sight upon an Ethiope. From afar, he had not even noticed how beautiful Aloui was, too busy feeling possessive over Jaffar: but now that he takes in his young companion, his long and elegant and noble face, his equally long and elegant fingers, the muscled yet slender beauty of his figure--why, this man's beauty puts most women in the shade! Indeed, it seems that now the tables have been turned and _Fadl_ is the one who's ended up with the best catch in the room.

 _I heard that,_ Jaffar laughs into his mind even as he resumes his ride upon Suleyman's cock.

 _As if you were not getting enough worship yourself!_ Fadl thinks back at him, but then he is too busy to think at Jaffar, seeing as he is now intoxicated by Aloui's kisses, kisses of coffee and sugar and cardamom which he drinks keenly from Aloui's lush, full mouth.

There is something to be said for instant attraction, the sort woven by a combination of sight and scent and touch: he and Aloui snap together like magnets, pressing together to touch as much skin against the other's as possible, Fadl surprised himself at the keenness of his desire for this youth he has only just met. There is something about the very feel, the very build, the very essence of Aloui that fits against him perfectly, melts into him perfectly, the exact temperature and silkiness of his skin that makes Fadl's own shiver up with gooseflesh; Aloui's fragrances of musk and flowers filling him an intoxicating breeze, a heady whirlwind, a rush.

More, more, Fadl has to have more: the winds and now, the fluids of his body, all of his blood and his saliva and his semen surge up to meet Aloui's as they kiss and they kiss. He sinks his hands into Aloui's oiled, perfumed braids, rutting against him keenly; Aloui responds in kind by walking him backwards to the divan beside Jaffar and Suleyman's, practically throwing Fadl onto it. And as Aloui falls to his knees and begins to offer Fadl some worship of his own, falling upon his cock and marvelling at it with hand and mouth as if it were the eighth wonder of the world, Fadl cannot fault him: it's not the first time someone has seen him as but an enormous cock, and he does not mind this, does not mind this at all.

 _That's because you **are** a giant prick,_ Jaffar quips, but Fadl does not listen to him, either: rather, he takes a wicked delight in seeing how Jaffar is still struggling with Suleyman's cock, especially as he knows just how much Jaffar himself enjoys the pain and the roughness he is now being given. Oh, but this is the life: Fadl lets himself sink into the eiderdown pillows as a skilled, hot mouth sucks on him just right and the greatest whore he has ever known--his little brother--performs a delightful erotic dance right before his eyes.

Fadl's cock pulses in Aloui's mouth just as Jaffar's throat bobs, his head thrown back over Suleyman's shoulder; Jaffar's entire body strains as he takes in the last inches of Suleyman's cock, his trembling, palpitating flesh only contained, held firmly in place by the discipline of Suleyman's dark fingers dug deep underneath his ribs and into the softness of his fluttering belly. Jaffar sobs, his entire body spasming just as his arse does around that formidable member he is now being impaled upon, all of his tremors now melting into the nectars of sweat and oil and sap: perfumed oil trickling out of his hair down his chest, perfumed oil trickling out of his arse down Suleyman's full, heavy balls, fragrant sap trickling down his own purpling cock, swaying there hard and aching and neglected. So neglected, in fact, that Fadl can feel its ache in his own, Jaffar's sweet pleasure-pain now echoing through his own body, doubling his own pleasure: a simultaneous cry bursts out from the brothers' mouths as both Fadl's and Jaffar's cocks pulse out yet more heavy sap.

Aloui pulls back for breath, smacking his lips: his wanton abandon equal to Jaffar's, he is shameless in his savouring of the taste of Fadl's cock. "Delicious," he declares and strokes Fadl loosely in his hand, knowing his own beauty as he kisses and licks at the shaft, gifting Fadl with the sight of his eyes, wicked and adoring as they look up at him with hunger.

"So are you," Fadl says and picks up his chin, tasting himself in Aloui's mouth; he nips at his lips, nips at his tongue, drinking in the youth's moans. He knows a ravishee when he sees one, someone who enjoys being taken, claimed by his lover's might; therefore, even if he would love nothing more than to throw Aloui down right now and empty his balls in his arse, he decides to gift him with more service still. "Suck," he whispers, licking Aloui's mouth, with a will to make those beautiful lips swell from the scratch of his moustache, from sucking his cock. "Suck until you can breathe no more."

"And what then?" Aloui whispers back, spitting on his hand and rolling it over the head of Fadl's cock, the curling of it so sweet that now Fadl's hips lift up from the pillows; "what will you do then, my love?"

Fadl's eyes narrow and he growls; he grabs Aloui's hair and presses his forehead against his. "I'll throw you down and _fuck you through the floor._ "

And it is Jaffar who cries out at that: a high howl as he begins to ride Suleyman harder, the slap of his flesh filling the room; so frantic that his moans and the sound of his flesh are not unlike those of a woman, Fadl always thinks, the wonderful feel of his perineum never not vulvic in its softness.

"Like a little cunny," Suleyman growls, himself having noticed the same, now inspired by Fadl's actions: he drags his fingernails down Jaffar's chest, leaving red marks. "Is that it? Hmm?" He pants in Jaffar's ear and gives his cock a hard slap, two; Jaffar's shrieks now ring so high that Fadl can only hope he has laid a silencing spell over the hall. A third time, Suleyman slaps Jaffar's cock, spraying his chest all over with sap; Suleyman scoops this up and licks his fingers, chuckling with relish. "Tastes sweet, too. But I want to see it, boy," he says and thrusts hard into Jaffar, making him yelp. "Get on the floor."

Jaffar's hands and knees have barely hit the floor before Suleyman is already covering him; he straddles Jaffar's arse with his thighs on either side of it, now pounding into him so hard Jaffar cannot even scream. Jaffar but lies there with his face down and his arse in the air, panting against the carpet, his fingers dug into it, his knuckles white from strain. Fadl casts him a concerned glance, even forgetting Aloui's delicious mouth for a moment; so brutally is Suleyman taking Jaffar that it's like one of those monstrous machines of Jaffar's gone berserk, pounding into him with an energy that seems beyond human in its strength.

 _You're killing him!_ Fadl wants to say, but it is then that Suleyman relents, perhaps having himself sensed how still Jaffar has lain.

"Come here," Suleyman says, gathering Jaffar up so that they are both kneeling, soothing him with kisses, his hands now gentle upon Jaffar's belly and chest. "Am I hurting your little cunny?"

"Only a little," Jaffar whispers against his lips, barely audible.

"I think I know something that might help. Aloui. Do you still want to try--?"

This seems to be something the men had talked about before Jaffar's arrival. "But a moment," Aloui tells Fadl and now turns to Jaffar, but not without picking up one of the bottles of fragrant oil.

And while Fadl is, at first, annoyed at being abandoned so, he had been too close to release in any case, and welcomes this delay: orgies like these do not come along every day, and he wants to make the most of it, wants to last. Besides, as the men begin to work on Jaffar, Fadl is himself enraptured by the sight: in fact, it's so marvellous that he has to clutch the pillows so as not to touch his cock.

For now, Suleyman kneels behind Jaffar and begins to thrust into him with a slower rhythm, while Aloui kisses them both and offers Jaffar the skill of his oiled hands: Fadl cannot see what it is exactly that Aloui is doing to him, but the expression upon Jaffar's face, his noises and the exquisite shivers of his body tell him enough. Jaffar's head falls upon Aloui's shoulder, and it is Fadl he looks at through half-lidded eyes as Aloui torments him with what must be the softest of caresses, and Suleyman moves into him with deep and slow strokes: Jaffar looks helpless, again so very young it breaks Fadl's heart, twists inside of him as he watches his little brother trembling there, enraptured by the sight.

Like cheetah trainers tame orphaned cubs by caressing them for hours on end, so do Aloui and Suleyman now tame Jaffar's pain into pleasure, turn the danger of an adventure with strangers into an unexpected, unusual act of love, a moment of male tenderness stolen from the world. It's something Fadl could never have expected, nor Jaffar: this must be why Jaffar is veritably sobbing between them, in that particular way he does whenever he is enjoying an internal orgasm. He looks fragile, as if he might break like glass, all the muscles upon his face fluttering; tears escape from underneath his downcast eyelashes as spurts of his sap, sap, sap splash upon the carpet underneath, having spilled over from the cup of Aloui's hands.

As Aloui turns around and offers--no, _plunges_ his arse upon Jaffar's cock, a convulsion goes through Fadl: so violently do Jaffar's sensations now crash against his own mind, Fadl become a lone cliff against which the waves of Jaffar's pleasure shatter, shatter, shatter, bright. Thus is Fadl, too, thrust into with every thrust of Suleyman's, the waves of it now echoing into Aloui's body as Jaffar takes him in turn-- _the lucky bastard!_ Fadl thinks dimly, Jaffar's mad laughter echoing within Fadl's own ribcage as Fadl lies there and takes himself with his hand, in time. Wildly, the storm-waves of Jaffar's pleasure rise and rise, the men ravishing him with their own favourite pleasures: the active and the receptive sodomite both submitting him utterly to the service of their desires. Desires surging into one another in the crucible of Jaffar's body, transforming him from the inside: for indeed, in this do they transform him, complete him into a true Hermaphroditus, in his _becoming_ the taker and the taken at once.

And once the pleasure within him rises too high for him to contain--

\--Fadl is there, suckling upon Jaffar's cock: he has to have this for himself, have Jaffar's full release into his mouth when its time comes. When Jaffar no longer has to watch for Aloui's pleasure, when Suleyman moves into him with firmer thrusts, when Fadl sucks upon him more keenly than an arse ever could, the way only he can, _only you, my beloved brother who know me so well,_ Jaffar sobs in his ecstasy, _only you, my brother; beloved brother mine_. Jaffar's ejaculation is so voluminous that Fadl chokes upon it, Jaffar's scream so high it pierces Fadl's ears, but he doesn't care, doesn't care, doesn't care.

And Aloui is there to help him: together, laughing, he and Fadl share Jaffar's sperm, Aloui remarking that even this is a taste feminine; he shares the taste with Suleyman, too, who agrees, exclaiming in his surprise.

"But now, it's my turn," Aloui grins with his arms around Fadl's neck like a maiden, licking droplets of sperm from Fadl's moustache. "Take me," he says and lies down upon the divan, spreading his arse with oiled fingers, placing his feet on either side of the divan's edge.

Fadl does not need to be told twice. It's been a long while since he's last lain with a man; having swum in seas of soft female flesh for so long, the hardness and the firmness of a man's body against his takes some getting used to. And then, there's the hot, tight, slick center within all this hardness that now calls to him irresistibly, the wonderful heat of Aloui's arse that seems to suck him in as soon as the head of his cock is past the entrance: helplessly, he slides in with little resistance. He's entering Aloui far too fast, he worries, having been so used to the soft pillows of Zainab's buttocks and thighs slowing him down a little; with a groan, he staggers and falls onto Aloui, slamming into hard muscle.

When he lifts his head from Aloui's shoulder to stutter an apology, Aloui is staring up at him, his eyes and mouth open wide. "Ohh--" Aloui gasps, throws back his head and takes a deep breath, blowing it out with a shudder. "God," he laugh-gasps, the vibrations of that laughter most marvellous waves of pleasure around Fadl's cock. Aloui looks stunned, as if he were seeing stars, weaving with his hands; panting, he lies there, yet he does not seem to be in too much pain.

"Are you all right?" Fadl asks, balancing himself, arranging himself into a better position; yet even now, he cannot stop thrusting, and would not be able to withdraw now, no matter what.

Aloui but lets out an utterly coquettish, whorish croon of delight. _It's as if he were trying to outdo Jaffar in harlotries!_ Fadl thinks dimly; Jaffar is moaning loudly behind them this very moment!

"You're big," Aloui but sighs, again with a deliberate, deep breath; Aloui is clearly making an effort to take as much of Fadl inside of himself as fast as possible. "Don't stop," he hisses and narrows his eyes, taking his hand to his cock.

Fadl cannot even answer him; he's already too busy not stopping. God, God, but Aloui is _tight;_ the firmness, compactness of his body somehow enhancing the sense of tightness of all that Fadl is now thrusting into. Fadl barely even realises he's breaking his rule of never fucking another male face to face unless it's Jaffar: so entranced is he by Aloui's beauty, drunk on the wicked glee dancing in Aloui's pale eyes, Fadl shivering himself in sinful delight at the sight of that rare man who truly loves being fucked. So easily does he now slide into Aloui, so fast does Aloui's arse now yield around his cock and then squeeze around him again that it's a marvel--in fact, it's not unlike that terrifying squeeze of the cunny that makes a man feel as if he is being devoured alive.

Yet no matter how many times sodomites are joked about as having little cunnies, it's still rare for such a cunnylike arse to exist in reality; the heat of Aloui's, too, is absolutely maddening. This heat that now surges inside of Fadl's body in turn; up his cock, down his balls, swirling in his hips and rushing up his spine like dark red flames. It's a miracle smoke doesn't emerge from where their bodies join one another's, he laughs inside in his delirium. It's like that old dirty verse a poet once composed of his mistress: _her cunny was so hot that when I fucked her, my pubic hair was singed, burned off!_

 _You **are** delirious,_ Jaffar laughs at him telepathically.

Fadl is too busy fucking Aloui to turn his head to see how Jaffar is doing, but from the way he can feel Jaffar being crushed into the carpet by Suleyman, and going by the noises Suleyman is now making, he is quite sure Jaffar is enjoying having his own fire-pit doused with plenty of cream-offerings this very moment.

Oh, but Fadl has to see this boy-cunny of Aloui's, get a good look at this rare treasure before he spends himself in it: yet it feels impossible to pull back and pause even for a little while, his hips refusing to obey him as they yearn to slam his cock into Aloui's tightness to the root, root, root; over and over and over. He wails as he forces himself to stop for a moment, standing absolutely still as Aloui's arse keeps on clenching around him, as Aloui works his own prick, lost in his own pleasure's heights: _yet wait, there!_ There, in what can only be an internal orgasm, Aloui's arse squeezes and then loosens around Fadl's cock, open wide: so massively, outrageously wide that Fadl can even see a little gap between his cock and its rim.

Oh, but he has to see this properly, he must; he's reeling as that rim pulls upon his cock like a little mouth, not wanting to let go of it, streaking his cock with glistening foam-- _what a sight!_ But for a brief moment, Fadl manages to pull back, pull back slowly, stretching the muscles with his glans, _careful, careful, that's right--_

\--and there, between his golden brown hands, between Aloui's dark brown buttocks, before the tip of his foam-glazed cock, a shocking pale pinkness now opening before his eyes: a wide, gaping hole, a _cavern_.

With a wail, a hopeless wail, Fadl gazes inside of that cavern, that which he has hollowed out of another's flesh with the power of his cock. He shivers in conqueror's delight, yet what comes out of his mouth is a whimper as he watches Aloui's guts heaving inside, as if breathing--and another whimper is expelled out of Fadl, his belly ripples and before he can stop himself, the first pulse of his ejaculate shoots inside of Aloui's guts. Swift, with a loud cry, he slams back inside of Aloui violently, slams against Aloui's body, beats his hips against the firm muscle of his belly and his chest; Aloui but sobs and moans low as Fadl so loses himself inside of his flesh, swallowed by the heat of his innards.

All of Fadl is afire, he bruising himself more than he is bruising Aloui, he is sure of that; keening into Aloui's shoulder, clasping his buttocks he but keeps on thrusting there, Aloui squeezing rhythmically around his waist with his thighs, sending further ripples of maddening, searing pleasure through Fadl with his husky laughter in Fadl's ear.

On and on Aloui milks him thus, frantically stroking his own cock, pushing his hips back onto Fadl's thrusts as he seeks his own release, now desperate to do so before Fadl softens. Yet, even if he is exhausted, Fadl would not dream of leaving Aloui unsated--he has promised so much with the flashing of his cock alone and knows he has to deliver; his pride would never allow for him to descend so low as to finish Aloui off with but hand or mouth. Now, _women_ and their inscrutable minds and bodies are a challenge for anyone to satisfy completely--even Zainab has told him so!--but a fellow man is easy to sate. No, Fadl would never be able to forgive himself for being unable to bring a healthy young man to climax; the warrior he is, he gives his all, only hoping he won't have a heart attack. Oh, if these two only knew they were fucking a pair of old men!

And it's not as if Fadl doesn't want to prolong the pleasure for himself, to spin it on and on; Aloui's beauty and his eager surrender, hunger for him are more than enough to keep him stirred and hard. Thus, even if he is slowed down by fatigue, Fadl falls onto Aloui over and over, slamming into him so that Aloui is bent in half upon the divan. He turns the weight of his exhaustion to his advantage, now using it to take Aloui with not his mere physical strength but his mental dominance, his command: a fuck slow, deep, intimate to ravish him to the core of his body and his soul with all his might.

In his taking, he gives, gives to Aloui that which he thirsts for, hungers for, Aloui's adoration alone spurring him into a new frenzy. Again, he touches as much of Aloui as possible, soaking his skin with his own sweat and vice versa, their scents now completely intermingled; forehead to forehead, he stares into Aloui's eyes as he gathers him close and fucks him deep, deep, deep, hard. All the way to his balls he's inside of Aloui, out and then in again, deep, deep; to his very viscera does he stab him with a hard blow of his hips, _rolling_ them as he's buried so deep that Aloui's eyes flip back in their sockets.

With a low and wicked laughter, he savours Aloui's shivering around his prick, his helpless whimpers, his flesh and his mind slowly unravelling around him with every blow; now each one of Fadl's smallest movements, tiniest licks, breaths upon Aloui's cheek triggers a tremor all throughout Aloui's body, a convulsion of his hips, a spasm of his arse and it's marvellous, a wonder. It's almost too soon, in fact, when Aloui's arse finally clutches at him harder than ever before and Aloui sprays both their bellies, even Fadl's beard with his sperm, crying out hoarsely from his joy; calmly, not erring from his rhythm for a moment, Fadl still pounds each and every drop and tremor and shiver and convulsion and moan out of Aloui with his hips. Even when Aloui's tremors start to subside and his sobs become noiseless, Fadl keeps on fucking him, revelling in his victory; perhaps vainglorious, overly proud of his power but oh, how he relishes it to the utmost.

Only a large hand upon his shoulder makes him awaken from his trance, his battle-fury: Suleyman.

It's fair enough, Fadl thinks: with his hands in a placating gesture, he slides out of Aloui and gets up so fast he dizzies--and before he knows it, he is on the floor, grateful for the softness of the rug as he falls onto it in a swoon.


	8. Chapter 8

  
***

Fadl must have been dozing for a while, for when he awakens, Jaffar is lying there on the floor with him--in what seems like an equal state of exhaustion.

Jaffar creaks one eye open and grins at him. "Greetings."

Fadl lifts his head and Aloui and Suleyman are lounging on the divans in a state of pleasant reverie, relaxed in their nudity, fortifying themselves with fresh cupfuls of coffee. But what are they--and now, Jaffar, too--smirking at?

It is then that Aloui laughs and bounces a piece of candied apricot off Fadl's prick--which, despite his having fainted, seems to not have softened at all.

"Oh." Fadl stares down at himself, and even that makes him dizzy. Besides, he always worries about how many chins he develops whenever he pulls back his head, but now, he doesn't quite know _what_ he looks like, thanks to Jaffar's spell.

 _Like an idiot, as always, brother,_ Jaffar chuckles. _As for the chins, I see about four._

Fadl slaps Jaffar on the prick for that; his doesn't seem to have gone down either. _Stop it!_ he thinks loudly at Jaffar, hoping Jaffar will hear it from underneath the yelp he now lets out as he curls up to protect himself from Fadl's admonishments. _Is this one of your potency spells? Or are these illusory, too?_

 _Listen, observe and remember,_ Jaffar but thinks at him and turns charmingly towards the Abyssinians again, rocking his hip coquettishly. "My friend and I have been sampling this new herb from China, you see," he explains conversationally. "It arrived on the Hajji caravan. Was that the one you yourselves travelled with?"

Suleyman smacks his lips and sets his coffee cup back on its tray. "The very same. Was it one of Feng's remedies?" he asks, sounding a little surprised. "That old charlatan has brought on more illnesses than he's healed them."

"It's not one of his, but I am willing to share the recipe," Jaffar purrs, measuring Suleyman's cock, leaving him in no doubt as to whether he desires a second round, "for information. On what's been going on at the border."

Suleyman and Aloui exchange alarmed glances.

"--We don't want to get mixed up in this--"

"--It's none of our business--"

"Worry not, my friends," Jaffar says and raises his hand. "I have cast a spell of silence over this hall. No one can hear a word of what is being said. There's a valuable medicine in it for you: an aphrodisiac that beats all tiger-teeth and rhinoceros-horns put together. Something that will make you rich beyond your imaginations--after it's paid off those gambling debts that drove you from your homes in the first place."

"You're a witch!" Aloui cries, crossing himself hurriedly.

 _Gambling debts?!_ Fadl sputters at Jaffar in his mind. _How in the Devil did you know **that?**_

 _Lucky guess,_ Jaffar tells him, raising his eyebrow at Suleyman. "I have some skill."

Suleyman keeps his eyes on Jaffar, measuring him carefully. "Money. No powders, no unguents, no witchcrafts. Let me see some _real_ money, and then, we will tell you all you we know."

Jaffar glances at Fadl, calm as ever. "What do you think, my friend?"

"I think that just as he needs to see the money, we need to see what kind of knowledge he has to offer us," Fadl says, yet keeps his voice friendly, determined to stay diplomatic at all costs. "Can you give us a hint?"

"Weapons," Aloui interjects before Suleyman can say anything--it's clear he has himself been disturbed by what he has seen. "When before, the bandits asked for money and jewels, they have now been paid with Indian steel."

"Aloui!" Suleyman barks, grabbing him by the arm, then looking from Fadl to Jaffar. "Now, for our sample. Fair's fair."

Jaffar snaps his fingers, and the bag he'd left at the dressing-room materialises before their very eyes. "Three hundred silver dirhams, a tenth of what I have set aside as reward for information. You may count them if you wish."

Aloui grabs the bag and begins to do just that.

"And the rest?" asks Suleyman.

Jaffar gets to his feet and makes for the little side-table upon which the coffee--and the silverware it's served in--sits. "Would you be so kind as to lift those for me, please?" Jaffar asks and grasps the tray, and Suleyman, while suspicious, nevertheless removes the cups and the carafe.

"Thank you." Murmuring a brief rune over the tray, Jaffar summons within it a vision of Mohammad's treasure-chamber--he only hopes the women won't tell Mohammad about his secret intelligence budget just yet. "Three thousand silver dirhams. I take it that that should do? As you can see, this chamber contains thousands of times that much."

Suleyman frowns. "And how do I know this is not but a spell, a mirage?"

"You don't," Fadl says, with his most authoritative voice, the voice of the once-Grand Vizier of all Persia. "But you have our word, and the knowledge of having served a great cause. Peace and prosperity in Samarkand, and the safety of the Silk Road now, and in the future."

"We do not even know your names," Aloui says as he closes the money-bag, tucking it firmly behind his pillow.

"It is safer for you that you don't," Jaffar says and sweeps his hand over the tray, dissolving the vision; he replaces the tray upon the little table, calmly rearranging the silverware upon it in a neat pattern. "Now, my friends, tell us all you know, and you will be rewarded--not only by men but God Himself."

Aloui and Suleyman exchange glances. The tension in the air is now higher than it was mid-rut; Fadl can see the very pulse beating upon Suleyman's massive neck. The Abyssinians know they have little to lose; they will be leaving this city in but three days, as the caravan sets off again.

Finally, Suleyman sighs and turns to Jaffar, leaning forwards on the divan and dangling his hands between his knees. "Where do you want us to start?"

"From the beginning," Jaffar says and sits down to listen.

***

The news bring to Jaffar and Fadl elation, surprise: a new hope stirs in both their hearts. For it seems that the Tang are not involved with the planned insurgency after all, too weakened by their own rebellions over the past century. The Chinese have had enough of rebellions, Suleyman tells them, and so have the Sogdians: when Feng, posing as a missionary, had tried to seduce the surviving generals to the insurgents' cause, they had all refused, being too busy rebuilding their own lands.

"And how do you know this?" Fadl asks.

"He tried to convert us, too," Aloui says. "He told us that we would be offered our share of the plunder."

Jaffar smirks. "Which you will now get, I promise, for remaining good Christians. Without plundering."

"So, let me guess?" Fadl asks. "He drowned you in talk of martyrs and the like; wouldn't let you get a word in? That's the sort of thing Atesh keeps going on about--that you'll go straight to Paradise if you defend the chosen ones."

"Exactly," Suleyman says. "But we are in no hurry to become martyrs. Some of the mercenaries, however, you should be watching out for, and the bandits--it seems to me he exchanged certain gestures, signals, code words with them."

"How many do you think he has managed to persuade to join?" Jaffar asks.

"It would be foolish to try and give you an accurate number," Suleyman says. "If I say two hundred, there will be twenty. If I say twenty, there will be two hundred."

Fadl nods. "They're good at that--hiding one's true faith when it's necessary for survival. Atesh even gave us suggestions on how to worship, so that the converts would not look different from other Muslims. Even if under their breaths, in their minds, they were fixing curse after curse to the ends of their prayers."

"Exactly that sort of thing," Suleyman says, visibly disgusted. "What kind of a faith is that? One that adds curses to its prayers, asking for God to kill so-and-so?"

"Aye; words like that come from man and not God," Jaffar says, equally appalled--he has seen enough of such cults. "They give God a bad name. But, come. You must have some idea of the numbers? Now that we've told you what we've seen."

Suleyman winces. "Like I said, I am hesitant to try and give you numbers. But it cannot be more than a hundred at most. I am certain that we are speaking of tens rather than hundreds."

Fadl blows out the breath he's been holding and leans back against the divan. "A hundred. And here, I thought two thousand," he laughs nervously, but immediately raises his hand when he sees Jaffar's glower. "I know, I know. Let us not breathe easy just yet."

"What about the swords, Aloui?" Jaffar asks. "Presuming that is what you meant by Indian steel."

"There were so many of these swords that it aroused my attention, that's all," Aloui says. "Usually, the caravans only carry enough weapons for their own defense," he says, and Fadl knows what he means: it's the armies and not caravans who move weapons from place to place, and the most valuable swords--relics, or the fantastical, bejewelled ones given to princes as gifts--have their own bodyguards. "And these were peculiarly shaped," Aloui continues, making a sweeping motion with his hand, imitating the curved shape of the type of sword that is still only used by Indians and a handful of Turks. "Most people would not even recognise them as swords, given their shape," he says, "when they were all bundled up atop the camels. I think most would've thought the packages ivory."

"Lion's-claws," Jaffar nods at Fadl. "My friend here is one of the very few Persian generals familiar with the type."

"Light and lethal," Fadl says grimly. "Even a boy can lift one," he winces; "exactly the type we are up against. But boys."

"Yet, there cannot be two hundred, even... no, no," Jaffar murmurs, tapping his tongue with his finger. "Do you know what I think?" he asks, looking around at everyone. "I think that if they have to smuggle the swords here, and if Feng is that desperate for converts, that means they truly do not have an army to speak of. In fact, I suspect that they have more swords than men! It all sounds rather clumsy and desperate, if you ask me," he now laughs, his eyes glittering, almost delirious in his relief. "No, no... I do think we are looking at somewhere closer to that twenty!"

Suleyman grasps the edge of the divan with his hands and looks at Jaffar from underneath his brows. "Even so, empires have been toppled with less. The few we are speaking of are madmen. Lunatics. They do not care if they live or die; they only care for their cause."

"And what about the Chinese witch-queens?" Aloui asks, again crossing himself. "Everyone knows they can raise the dead! What if they are raising an army of ghosts, ghouls, djinn?"

"We are prepared for that," Jaffar says, looking into the distance; "we have one or two witch-queens of our own on our side."

As Aloui realises Jaffar is completely serious, he looks more alarmed than he was at the idea of the Chinese witch-queens. Restless, he gets up and makes for the shelf sunk into the back wall of the alcove, examining the different types of bottles lined therein. "Which one's the wine?"

Fadl laughs. "Do you know, I don't think they would be this desperate had they any true magics on their side, even. Superstition, perhaps? Aye, I'll give them that. But as my friend says, we are more than prepared. Come, then, my friends: is there anything more you can tell us?"

"I'm afraid that's all I know," Suleyman says, helping himself to some grapes. "Aloui?" he asks with his mouth full.

"No, that's all," Aloui says. His hands tremble as he fills the large drinking-bowl from a heavy crystal ewer; even as Suleyman offers to hold up the bowl, Aloui spills a little wine onto Suleyman's hands. "Do you know," Aloui laughs nervously as he sets the ewer aside, "right now, I would rather forget."

"I'll drink to that," Fadl says and toasts. "To victory!" he cries and passes the bowl to Jaffar.

"To friendship," Jaffar says and toasts everyone in turn, his gaze heated once more as he lingers upon Suleyman's figure, brushing Suleyman's toes with his. "Now, speaking of which... where were we?

***

The men spend the rest of the morning carousing, in a mood much merrier: light from relief and wine, the only heaviness in them is no longer that of their hearts, but that of blood weighing down their sexes from arousal. Jaffar in particular is, as ever, the erotic champion inexhaustible: whereas Fadl and Aloui settle for caresses lighter--sucks, ruts--Jaffar seeks ever more, insatiable.

To his great delight, Jaffar finds that rarest of men in Suleyman: one who is his match in eagerness, in sexual stamina. He once was a keen wrestler before his exile, he tells them, and it is no wonder: the way he handles Jaffar's body, lifting it, bending it, tossing it, lifting it again as if he were lighter than a feather takes even Fadl--a man who has lived his life among warriors--by surprise.

Fadl marvels at the sight as he lies there upon his own divan, spooning Aloui from behind: here, Jaffar's golden legs parted by Suleyman's ebony ones, again as if the branches of two trees entwined; here, Jaffar's long, loose hair clinging to Suleyman's shaven scalp, shining from sweat; there, the afternoon light playing upon the planes of Suleyman's long and broad back and shoulders, their undulating hills and valleys of full and hard muscle. The steep triangle formed by his shoulders and his narrow hips, around which Jaffar's legs now clutch, Jaffar's softness again so much like a woman's; Jaffar's anklets chiming as his feet drum upon Suleyman's buttocks, firm and round.

Jaffar, of course, is driven mad with heat by this, himself not having lain with a man not Fadl in years. From underneath Suleyman's arm, Fadl can glimpse Jaffar's eyes, staring up at Suleyman in helpless adoration, awe; his eyelashes wet from sweat and tears, his mouth open, his tongue trembling behind his teeth. With each one of Suleyman's thrusts, Jaffar's emotions, sensations now wash over Fadl once more, and he lies there, lies there behind Aloui and listens: so intensely can he now feel everything that Jaffar feels that he wonders if this is not a wound psychic, a tear in Jaffar's defenses, his sensations bleeding out as if from a gash ripped into his self by the sheer power of Suleyman.

For Jaffar's is a soul raw, as raw as his arse is by now, as raw as his throat is from moaning, hoarse from screaming, raw, raw; gold and red dance in his eyes and his wrist aches as he works his prick--that, too, sore from his stroking of it. Already he has ejaculated at least thrice, but he is losing count as all his internal and external orgasms now flow together, as if rivers joining in one great cascade of pleasure--this calculating, too, Fadl can overhear from his mind, his ridiculous little brother never not the engineer. Jaffar's throat is dry, his lungs are dry, his balls and his prick growing drier by the moment: yet he is still chasing for something more, voiceless as he pants underneath Suleyman.

It is then that Fadl mentally overhears what Jaffar is after, and groans into Aloui's neck. "Oh, God."

"What's that?" Aloui asks over his shoulder.

Fadl runs his hand down Aloui's belly, cupping his soft prick. "I think my friend wants something more than what he's getting now."

Aloui lets out a scoffing laugh. "What more can he need besides _that?_ "

Fadl shakes his head. "You don't know him. He'd have the entire world in his bed, were he given the chance: first he'd get fucked by it, and then fuck it in turn. And even then, he'd come back for seconds."

"I am afraid I am out of combat," Aloui yawns, stretching in Fadl's arms. "I'm sorry."

It is then that Jaffar notices that Fadl has noticed, and bursts into laughter, so that now Suleyman looks at Fadl over his shoulder.

"What's that?" Suleyman asks, wiping sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

 _I am always the one who has to finish off what you've started,_ Fadl grumbles at Jaffar telepathically, sits up and grabs a bottle of oil.

"It's only that my _catamite_ here has a secret desire," Fadl says, "but is too shy to voice it--believe it or not, he is capable of bashfulness at times!" He sits on the divan next to Jaffar but addresses Suleyman instead, tossing the bottle from one hand to another. "I believe he sought out your company with hopes of being taken by two cocks at once," he says bluntly, "and in the same location, at that."

Suleyman's eyes fly wide, but Fadl can see his hips bucking into Jaffar, Jaffar letting out a yelp at that. "Is that even possible?" Suleyman asks, but thankfully, he does not seem to have an objection towards the idea.

"I think we are about to find out," Fadl says and raises his eyebrow, poking Jaffar in the ribs, making him yelp once more. "Speak, harlot."

"My _pimp_ here," Jaffar pants, ignoring Fadl's glower, "is right. It should be possible--" he looks hurriedly from Fadl to Suleyman, "if you are but careful, and make liberal use of a thick enough unguent."

Before Jaffar has even finished explaining, Suleyman has slid out of him, smacking him on the arse. "Hurry, then. But I insist upon lying down;" he says as he does just that upon the carpet, stretching out to lie down on his back, "my back cannot take much more."

"All right," Jaffar grins and licks his lips, making himself comfortable upon Suleyman as Suleyman makes himself comfortable upon the floor. By God, Fadl swears Jaffar's cock must have grown at least an inch, if not two, at the very thought of his arse getting doubly fucked! How he has the energy for all this, Fadl simply does not know.

But then, is Fadl himself any better? Whether it's a spell of Jaffar's or a Barmakid family curse that's now brought it on, his prick, too, has sprung to attention. It's as eager as Jaffar himself is as Fadl now greases himself and arranges himself into position atop Jaffar, who's now facing Suleyman.

Despite, or perhaps exactly because of the size of Suleyman's cock, Jaffar can now slide down upon him as easily as if his arse were a cunny: indeed, it's a little cunny Fadl tries to think of it as as he begins to push inside next to Suleyman. At first, he feels a little awkward rubbing his cock against another man's like this, especially as he hasn't played much with Suleyman so far, both of them having fallen naturally to their roles as the active sodomites; yet, strangely--and perhaps this is Jaffar's magic, or wine--this seems but a natural conclusion to their orgy. Suleyman's amused, curious smile over Jaffar's shoulder is enough to encourage Fadl, to drive away the last of his awkwardness; now, he, too, is filled with curiosity and excitement.

Yet, as Jaffar moans and shudders between them, as his arse begins to open for Fadl's relentless pushes, to give, Fadl is possessed by the need to know how this feels for Jaffar himself. What madness is it in his brother that so whips him on and on, to try the limits of his body in such an extreme manner?

 _What **do** you get out of this, little brother?_ Fadl asks him with his mind. What is it that so compels him, beyond the ordinary human need of sating one's desire? What is it that so drives him to seek out such extraordinary experiences, far beyond the ordinary acts of love? What is it that possesses him, what demons within his self, to always seek out these extremes, perversions fantastical? _What, brother,_ Fadl cries in his mind--nay, sputters-- _is wrong with a good, honest, simple **fuck?**_

 _What drives me to do the same with everything else, brother mine,_ Jaffar responds: _a thirst for **knowledge**. Knowledge brings with itself increased understanding, and with increased understanding, comes enhanced experience. Call it awareness: one becomes conscious of a number of sensations, dimensions one had not been aware of before. And while it is indeed true that knowledge can often bring to its seeker sorrow, it can increase his pleasure also, having revealed to him many more new things to derive pleasure from. Verily, all ecstasy, all of that which we call sublime, is something that transcends the ordinary. And the soul cannot experience the full extent of the sublime, if one does not know what one is transcending in the first place! Whether it be the ecstasies of love, the ecstasies of religion, or the ecstasies of the arts we are speaking of, this same truth applies to them all: if one does not know how complex and riddled all things are, and does not know where the ordinary limits of various things lie, one cannot derive as high a pleasure from solving all those riddles, from transcending all those limits. Thus, brother mine, **to know is to go beyond,** and to go beyond is the greatest pleasure of all._

 _I'm sorry I asked,_ Fadl scoffs as he's still struggling to insert his prick next to Suleyman's. "Help me," he says out loud, pushing at the muscles that refuse to yield. "To transcend _this!_ "

 _Then, let me show you how it is for me, Fadl;_ Jaffar tells him, his voice gentle, an intoxicated, voluptuous sigh: _let me show it to you all, beloved brother mine; let me show it to you, all._

And now, Jaffar's consciousness, his bodily sensations--all that had merely overlapped Fadl's own before--now all of these things, Jaffar's very being, his existence flood Fadl's entirely, soak through him and he is one with Jaffar's entire experience, one.

Fadl judders and slides inside, collapsing atop Jaffar and Suleyman.

_Oh._

Darkness--his eyes are closed.

But this is a darkness profounder than one of mere closed eyelids: it is a darkness deep, heated that now surrounds him from all sides, suspending him in a space amniotic, warm; a deep red hue of flesh, of beating blood. And within this darkness, flashes of pain, sharp, hard: pain like lightning splitting black clouds, white. And upon its heels, a panic that now beads upon Jaffar's skin a rain of sweat: the terror and the fear, and yet the sickening thrill brought on by the suddenness, the immensity of this penetration doubled. And yet all of this is girt, wrapt, enshrouded by a craving, a heat, a need: far more maddening than that mere itch that Fadl sees the act of coitus as the scratching of--and now, Fadl cannot tell whether this is Jaffar scolding him, or he realising it himself, or both.

Jaffar moves, a careful, tentative attempt at a ride; Fadl's stomach turns as he can feel himself--as Jaffar--opening simultaneously as he, Fadl, himself pushes inside. Yet now, the euphoria of heavy, expanding, nigh unbearable fullness, the sensation of being stretched to one's utmost limits--the gorging, ravenous, gluttonous madness that is Jaffar--makes Fadl forget himself, drunk. Only connected to his own body by a mere thin thread of consciousness, he bathes in Jaffar's sensations, moaning louder than Jaffar himself does as he swims in the doubled thrusts of Fadl and Suleyman, beat after beat of white heat bolting up his spine as the men settle into a rhythm agreeable. One pulls back as one pushes inside, Jaffar's flesh shuddering around them in sparks of blue and white and more white. Pleasure and pain lose their meanings; that's how far beyond both he, they all now are.

Is this what Messalina had felt when she had set out to prove herself, taking upon herself cock after cock after cock? Or Yassamin, when she had described herself as the crucible in which Jaffar and Fadl's thirty-year acrimony had been, through the alchemy of the brothers taking her at once, dissolved? _Only Jaffar could think that,_ the ghost of Fadl now laughs inside; _only Jaffar could so compare himself to a woman._ But it's true also that here, in this womb of Jaffar's experience, that all the distinctions between sexes, of males and females disappear, too; all.

And with this is now renewed the memory of abiding, that sweet abiding in pleasure Fadl had floated in that night he and Jaffar and Yassamin had swum in the haze of opium's delight: the need for orgasm, that relentless, desperate drive for release is strangely absent from Jaffar, only Fadl and Suleyman's bodies possessing it as they keep on churning inside of him. Entranced, Jaffar but floats himself, completely submerged within this pleasure, pain having faded into mere discomfort and now only delight sending wave after wave of bliss through his body. He is but awareness, awareness of the wonderfulness of the two men now giving him this, he giving of himself unto them in thanks: even if a little regret flashes through his and Fadl's minds at his not daring to risk telepathy with Suleyman, Jaffar nevertheless makes up for it by giving to him as much of his flesh as he can.

Jaffar cannot squeeze around them, but what he _can_ do is rock back onto their cocks; even in his overwhelmed state that sets his whole body trembling, he can still paint Suleyman's magnificent chest and shoulders in grateful, adoring kisses, breathing in his musk. Quietly, he swims in a mood grateful, grateful for this rare, fleeting, never-to-come-again moment; he spreads himself out, spreads out all his senses and savours it to the utmost. Even as the men surround him and enfold him, he now enfolds them, too: making a nest of his body for their desires to find their end.

Even if Suleyman is not telepathic, both Jaffar and Fadl marvel at the effects of this act upon him. For now, as he lies beneath them, his every muscle is alive and rippling with rich pleasure, alight; his lips curl in voluptuous delight, the glittering of his eyes so deliciously filthy Fadl has rarely seen the like even upon rakes, upon men most debauched. Suleyman is truly making the most of this moment himself, letting pleasure flow over him in warm waves, waves far more thrilling than those he's been washed with at this bath-house; the perfumes of Jaffar's and Fadl's combined sweats making his nostrils flutter as he inhales them voraciously, a glutton.

The fact that he is balancing not one, but two men atop himself seems to Suleyman no task at all; now, he cups Fadl's buttocks, too, pulling him inside of Jaffar at the same time; Fadl, encouraged by this friendliness, shares with him a conspiratorial laugh as this doubled thrust elicits a particularly deep moan out of Jaffar. Suleyman raises his head for a kiss, and Fadl answers it, pleasuring both him and Jaffar with his cock; the boldness with which Suleyman licks his mouth makes Fadl's cock leap against his, as much as a cock can leap in quarters so tight. Moaning back into Suleyman's mouth, Fadl begins to thrust harder, now, deliberately making Jaffar moan, too, so that the vibrations of their cries can ring in the echo chambers of all their chests, bringing them all yet further delight.

And all around them, Jaffar's desire blossoms and heaves, uncurling and unfurling about them in waves of euphoria; his prick is not even fully hard, but nevertheless pulses softly against Suleyman's belly, trickling down his side. As Fadl drags his hand across this streak of fluid to prove it to himself, Suleyman, too, lets out a noise of surprise, then bursts into laughter, rumbling wonderfully through both Jaffar and Fadl; further rivulets not of Jaffar's sap, but the oil from Jaffar's hair, glisten across his shoulders like a silvern net. "Never seen anything like it!" he says, drags his own hand through the wetness and brings it to Jaffar's mouth; now all three men cry out loud as Jaffar takes his finger into his mouth and sucks, _bites._

"Little minx!" Suleyman gasps, sinking his hand into Jaffar's hair and punishing him with a brutal kiss, a thrust of his hips--and here, Fadl thought Jaffar could not clench his arse when this stretched! Now, however, Jaffar proves him wrong, wailing as he squirms there, squeezing their cocks over and over.

"Enough," Suleyman murmurs, thrusting more vigorously, now; never taking his hand from Jaffar's hair, he twists it, worrying at his lips with his teeth, drinking in Jaffar's whimpers. "Come, let's milk this little trollop dry once and for all."

"I warn you; there's an entire barrelful of sap in this young palm, as you've seen," Fadl laughs. "But yes, let's."

"Mmmhh," Jaffar groans, his head buried in Suleyman's shoulder. "One at a time," he says, weaving with his hand--even if he loves this, he is sure he will be unable to come in this position, with the two of them inside of him.

"What's that?" Suleyman asks.

But Fadl is already withdrawing from Jaffar. "It's fair enough," he says and smacks Jaffar on the arse. "As a matter of fact, I was hoping to finish in his mouth," he grins and takes himself in hand.

"Well, then," Suleyman says and pulls Jaffar close, so that they are now embracing face to face upon the soft carpet, both lying on their sides. "Is this more like it?" he asks Jaffar, taking one of Jaffar's legs and wrapping it around his waist, never ceasing in his rhythmical, slow thrusts. "Hmm?"

"Yes," Jaffar hisses, his eyes closed, his frown deep, his whimpers high; he brings his hand to his cock and begins to stroke it frantically, and even if Fadl is now further away from him, Fadl can sense that Jaffar's heat has suddenly risen to a peak, a new rush from whatever magical spot it is that Suleyman is now massaging inside of him, blow after blow after blow. Perhaps it's a spot Suleyman had discovered earlier; perhaps they have done a little of this already when Fadl had been busy taking Aloui.

Aloui. Curious, Fadl casts a glance in the youth's direction, with hopes of satisfying his now-lonely prick, but Aloui seems fast asleep; as beautiful as a statue of a sleeping faun, he rests upon the eiderdown mattress, and Fadl hasn't the heart to stir him. _Some people can sleep through anything,_ he mutters in his mind.

But nevermind. Perhaps it is some perversion of his own, and perhaps it is his own physical exhaustion, but Fadl can now think of something even better than taking Jaffar's mouth: namely, taking his pleasure from this situation alone, drinking in its sensations, scents, sights. Besides, he cannot find a good position to take Jaffar's mouth in without straining his already-aching back and hips, and being inside of Jaffar's pleasure had felt so wonderful that he'd much rather return to bask there instead.

Therefore, Fadl now takes his place behind Jaffar and Suleyman upon the rich rug, seating himself against the foot of one of the divans, his knees lifted and his legs spread comfortably; sensing his need, Jaffar allows him inside of his experience once more. There, Fadl reels, again diving deep inside of the sea of Jaffar's pleasure, sublime: he but takes one hand to his cock and another to his sack, barely needing to touch himself at all to keep up a wonderful flow towards release; a gentle but sure glide.

When Fadl closes his eyes, he sees Suleyman through Jaffar's eyes: his body shudders at the shock, shudders again as Suleyman turns Jaffar onto his back, folds his legs and slams inside. A hoarse gasp is blown out of both brothers' mouths, Jaffar able to see his own, shocked face reflected in Suleyman's eyes; a lash of terror goes through him at the sight of himself so helpless. Suleyman's eyes, his beautiful, large, dark eyes and his lashes glittering with sweat: the knowledge within them, of exactly what his hips are now doing to Jaffar but doubles the effect of his blows. The sensation of Suleyman's prick going in and out, the relish Jaffar feels at just how open he is, how easily another man can now move inside of him; the marvel he feels every time those stubborn muscles, the ones that one so often feels will never give, can now yield so completely unto their conqueror. The thickness of Suleyman's cock inside of him, the wet noises his balls make against his arse; the shaft, the glans, the way it drags upon the surfaces of his guts--

And there--the idea, the desire for a certain perverse act that now flits through Jaffar's mind--oh, but Fadl shivers, his balls jumping up against his fist, and he groans in pleasure-disgust. Jaffar is hesitating, hesitating as he thinks of whether to ask this of Suleyman; and ashamed he should be, for being such a--

"He wants to taste himself," Fadl hisses, in wicked, evil delight; he is nearly undone from the sheer pleasure he derives from the sight of Jaffar's embarrassment, from Jaffar's fury at him having given him away thus. "Look at the way his mouth gapes open like that," Fadl now grins, breathless from his own heat, straining as he squeezes his cock, forcing himself to stop stroking so that he will not come this very instant. "I know for a fact that it's his greatest delight."

Jaffar's eyes fly wide, and he looks from Suleyman to Fadl and back again. "You bastard!"

Yet Suleyman doesn't even look at Fadl, only chuckles at Jaffar. "Do you think I should oblige?" he asks, but does not wait for Jaffar's answer before he chooses to pin him to the floor with a deep blow and a roll of his hips. This time, he makes that roll deliberately slow, it seems, as if to truly drench his cock in--what? Fadl can hear Jaffar thinking. Jaffar had taken an enema as soon as they'd come here, of course, and they had been using copious amounts of grease, oil; but now, Suleyman pulls back and Jaffar can see strings, lashes of _foam_  painting Suleyman's cock. Sodomy's foam, the kind that's only produced by a persistent friction upon the membranes of the gut; Jaffar wails, his shudders, his belly-ripples travelling all over Fadl's body with such violent force Fadl can feel them in his bones, his very viscera.

"Do, my friend," Fadl croaks at Suleyman, dizzy from now seeing two things at once; he closes his eyes once more and only sees Suleyman, only feels Suleyman, only feels his mouth watering, his arse clenching around Suleyman's cock, cock, cock. Jaffar's desire made his own, Fadl's back arches as he craves that taste, craves, made himself as perverse as his brother.

And now, Suleyman pulls out, revealing the glistening, glittering beauty of his cock; the rich white foam of it, its golden rivulets of oil dripping down Jaffar's belly and chest as Suleyman brings it up to Jaffar's mouth.

For a moment, they remain there, poised upon the edge of final fulfillment, as if Suleyman were still somehow asking Jaffar if he truly was this perverse, if he was truly going to go through with this: thus, he squats atop Jaffar, Jaffar staring up at him, bent double; both their bellies dip once, twice.

Finally, Jaffar brings his fingers to his arse and keening, begins to take himself, hard; a sloshing noise fills the alcove.

Staring right into Suleyman's eyes, he opens his mouth.

Suleyman laughs, _laughs;_ he plunges his cock into Jaffar's mouth, and the moment the taste unfurls upon Jaffar's tongue, the moment Suleyman's prick hits the back of Jaffar's throat, Fadl, too, is undone. Wailing, Fadl spits on his own fingers and pushes them roughly inside of his arse, taking himself as furiously as Jaffar now does, and nevermind the roughness, nevermind the pain; he wants it all.

The brothers' cries, their howls, their moans echo off the marble walls, colliding with each other as they both unravel upon their hands, upon Suleyman's cock; each one of Jaffar's gags, ejaculations sends a new burst of sperm out of Fadl's cock, too, both brothers' ejaculate now thin and watery, but their pleasure-convulsions all the more exquisite due to their sheer exhaustion. Indeed, the skin of Fadl's prick now burns as Jaffar's does, Jaffar far more ravished than he; the tremors of Jaffar's little howls rattle through Fadl's ribs as Suleyman but keeps on taking his mouth, then his arse, then his mouth again until Suleyman, too, finally collapses, his cock buried inside of Jaffar's arse. Clutching Jaffar, he falls onto him, a deep bellow rumbling from his chest, his balls leaping high in their sack once, twice, thrice; every hill of muscle upon his massive body rippling as he empties himself inside of Jaffar.

Again, Fadl realises he must have fallen asleep, for one needs to be asleep to awaken in the first place: Suleyman and Jaffar are both so exhausted they but lie on the floor with their eyes closed, but they must have been there for a while, for the sweat upon their bodies has dried almost completely and their breathing now seems even. In fact, Fadl feels a little forlorn, now, even, alone: he does not want to think about how much warmer it had felt to be inside of Jaffar--to _be_ Jaffar, and how much colder he himself feels in comparison.

No. These are a fool's thoughts. Fadl refuses to think of himself as an icicle; besides, action is always the best thing to dissolve melancholic thoughts of that nature, and therefore Fadl decides to now crawl into bed with Aloui once more.

Aloui barely stirs as Fadl climbs onto the divan and slips underneath the heavy down quilt, wrapping his limbs around Aloui, spooning him the way he did before.

"Mmh?" Aloui enquires.

"Hush," Fadl mumbles and nuzzles into Aloui's shoulder. "Sleep." At least Aloui is innocent, and won't mock him for such cravings of tenderness the way Jaffar would, not knowing how unusual a thing tenderness is for Fadl in the first place.

But even if Fadl closes his eyes, he can feel Jaffar raising an eyebrow, feel him gently smiling at him from the floor. _I shan't laugh, brother. The past decade should have surely taught you that I have but encouraged your journey towards humanity. Welcome._

 _Journey towards your levels of whoredom, more like,_ Fadl scoffs right back at him.

Jaffar but purrs at him as he, too, now turns to spoon Suleyman, wrapping his limbs around him, determined to enjoy him while he still can. _You have to admit, it worked most marvellously. Now, I suggest you sleep and gather your strength: we've got a lot to do once we get home._

 _Yes,_ Fadl groans in his mind, _particularly the part where we explain this to the women._

 _You know, I wouldn't be surprised if they were exhausted in this exact same fashion by the time we arrive,_ Jaffar chuckles.

 _That's exactly what I'm afraid of,_ Fadl says. _But knowing women's insatiability..._ he thinks, a twinge of pain going through his sore cock.

_That's why I told you to sleep, brother mine. Who knows; Zainab might indeed ask for a second round: this time from her stallion, once she's had her way with my wife._

The only answer Fadl has to that is another moan.

But Jaffar is right--they need the rest. Thus, Fadl fluffs up a pillow, settles comfortably against Aloui and soon enough, sleep overwhelms him once more.


	9. Chapter 9

*** 

**Afrasiyab**

 **The harem**

*** 

"Thank you," Jaffar whispers as he accepts the herbal tea from Yassamin, his throat too sore to utter any words out loud.

That's what he gets for forgetting his usual hygiene after _that_ particular perversion, he'd thought the very next morning after his return to Afrasiyab from the baths. For now, thanks to having fallen asleep in Suleyman's arms without using a cleansing spell first, he has come down with a severe throat infection. He'd come to associate cleansing spells with contraception and the health of the nether regions so much that he'd forgotten about the upper regions entirely, and now he's paying the price: he's had a fever for days, his tonsils having nearly swollen shut until with the aid of this tea, they'd managed to bring the swelling down. A potent brew of the strongest of black teas, of poppy seeds, of star anise and ginger, he can only swallow it in small gulps after having dissolved veritable mountains of honey and milk into it to subdue at least some of its bitterness.

"At least I can have you all to myself," Yassamin says as she climbs into bed next to him, herself exhausted after a long day. It's early evening, and were Jaffar in full health, he would still be down in Mohammad's workshop, or otherwise working on the fountains and other clockwork displays for his great Tiregan festival.

"God is merciful," Jaffar says and nuzzles Yassamin, handing the cup to her so that she may partake of the medicine, too. He feels his age, as it is now she who follows him into the restful waking dream of opium and not the other way around, the way he has usually shared this retreat with her when tending to the pains of her womanhood. "Perhaps He meant for me to slow down," Jaffar murmurs as Yassamin discards the cup and wincing, moves to lie down face to face with him. "And this was His way of giving me respite."

"And I am glad," Yassamin says and brushes his cheek with the backs of her fingers. Everyone's been tearing at them, pulling them in different directions. First there were Mohammad's pageants taking up half of last month, and now this grand festival he is about to arrange--ostensibly for Tiregan, but also to tease out the enemy with a public appearance--with all its complex court ceremonies! Oh, damned be this conspiracy on top of it all--especially as, despite Jaffar and Fadl's insistence, Yassamin is not quite convinced that they are only up against a few madmen. For all she knows, these madmen could still have an entire army lying in wait somewhere, ready to ambush them all at any moment, now.

This damned shadow of death that now hangs upon them all, giving them no respite! Even the bitter opium barely gives Yassamin any relief, or perhaps it has merely not begun its work yet. But the fact of the matter remains that whichever way you look at it, she and Jaffar are now as harassed as they had been ten years ago in Baghdad. To think of it! That they had come to Samarkand exactly to escape court intrigues and assassinations, yet now, they are as exposed to danger as they ever were. Only now it's worse, since they have children to worry about--oh, but Yassamin is as exhausted by her worry as Jaffar is by his fever.

Quietly, she kisses Jaffar's palm, sighing into it, cupping it against her cheek. "At the same time, I wish this were all over, but I am so afraid of what will happen to us, my love. Of whether I will still have a husband, come Tiregan."

He sighs and kisses her forehead; his lips are dry and hot. "Oh, my love. I have told you; there are but a handful of madmen. No army."

"Even one madman is too many, and you know that's true. I wish you'd take it seriously, husband! You should _see_ the amount of work Latifa and I have had to do, setting up the defense all on our own because Zainab was _useless_! She was either interfering or sulking or throwing tantrums, meaning we couldn't get anything done at her house, and it was too far away anyway. So we had to bring all the crystals and mirrors over here, clear the shabestan underneath the harem and set them up all over again--Jaffar? Are you even listening to what I'm saying?"

"I am," Jaffar croaks, having closed his eyes only from fatigue. "And I _do_ take it seriously," he says with utter sincerity, squeezing her hand. "Show me what you've done, my love. Show me."

Yassamin closes her eyes and breathes in deeply once, twice, thrice: at the same time, she can finally feel the opium unfurling inside of her fully, spreading into her mind and her limbs as relief. Or is that Jaffar's experience that now swirls into her mind, golden in the darkness of this room, warm? It's so profoundly different from the irritation, exhaustion and anxiety she had felt but a moment ago: her entire body relaxes, as if her very muscles were letting out a breath they'd been holding, sinking into a warm bath of rosewater and sunlight.

"I am sorry," she slurs, realising she had been nagging; however, now all she can feel is pleasure, pleasure. "Is that you?" she mumbles, for this feels like Jaffar's relaxation-magic once more; that magic he uses to undo her anxieties at times like these. "Or the tea?"

 _Like any plant extract could compare to the tremors of pleasure my little demoness feels when her sorcerer conjures her into the magic circle of his arms,_ Jaffar purrs, now sounding far more like his usual self--including taking credit for the tea's effects, but Yassamin does not mind, does not mind at all.

The jasmine kissed open by the moonlight, gently does he unfold her limbs, her mind; all of her sighing in joy as she relaxes into his embrace like rain: her blood unfurls fragrant, her flesh as light as light, her hair water cascading up a mountainside; up, up, up, higher and higher she soars into the clouds girt with gold, high, high.

 _I had no idea it was that strong,_ she laughs into his mind, her mind spinning, all of her spinning, a swallow vaulting in the vault of the sky--

He laces his fingers with hers and presses his forehead against hers. _It isn't. I told you, 'tis but I,_ he chuckles a poet and kisses her softly. _My glad little bird. Plunge down from your sky for a moment; show me what you built downstairs._

 _Whatever you say,_ she slurs, if one can slur telepathically; she doesn't believe for a moment that Jaffar hasn't done something to increase the--whatever it is--oh, but she is reeling, floating and sinking and rising at the same time. _Where were we?_

 _I apologise,_ he laugh-murmurs into her mind. _I did make it too strong, then; my intention was not to make you delirious, only to relieve the anguish and exhaustion I felt in your mind, my love._ He blows gently against her forehead. _There. Is that better?_

And there's wind, a fresh, cool wind that now blows through her mind, through the vast shabestan of Afrasiyab's harem, where the women have laid out their elaborate systems of magical defenses. Afrasiyab, because that's where Mohammad has decided to stay until the conspiracy is quashed; Afrasiyab, because that's the place the brothers had decided to make into the base of their operations; Afrasiyab, because Zainab's house, being on the outskirts of Samarkand, had been a little too far away for them to keep travelling between it and the most crucial parts of the city. Zainab had been relieved, yet terrified at the same time, demanding magical protection for New Lesbos nevertheless--which Latifa had granted her, gladly--but since Fadl had stayed at Afrasiyab instead of Thousand Suns or New Lesbos, Zainab had been torn between residences ever since.

But as Yassamin's bare feet now land on the richly carpeted floor of the shabestan, there's no one else in there: Jaffar and Latifa had arranged it so that the women of the harem needed not use it this summer despite the heat, and had been successfully lured into staying in a series of beautiful, cool and airy pavilions in the gardens instead. The sisters had had the shabestan all to themselves, and now, Yassamin displays their handiwork to Jaffar with pride.

The spacious, frescoed and stuccoed vaults of the shabestan surround a magical diagram of great complexity and detail, drawn in colourful powders on its floor. The entire city of Samarkand is represented by an eight-pointed star, each point watching over a specific site corresponding to one of the talismans the men and Lina had installed. In fact, the star itself is a talisman, with various sigils for each quarter of the city drawn in their appropriate places; there's a mirror at each point of the star, ready for scrying or sending messages to its destination. In the centre of the diagram there's a circle, wide enough to seat about eight people; in the middle of this circle sits a map of the Afrasiyab complex itself. The map of Afrasiyab, in turn, is surrounded by astrological sigils relating to its place in time and space, as well as ones relating to its function: Jupiter to symbolise kingship, lions to symbolise majesty, Mars to offer defense, and so on. Further sigils around it relate to the stars ruling the day and the hour of the Tiregan festival; the Barmakids had even delayed the festival by a day to make sure Mohammad's ruling stars were going to be at their strongest and most auspicious.

And now, in Yassamin-Jaffar's mind, the room _glows._ Yet this is not a glow cast merely by the oil lamps surrounding the room, but an inner glow, a glow holy, one of pure baraka: the whole arrangement itself a shrine built from the faith of two exceptional women, the diagram no less than an embodied prayer. The harmoniously arranged patterns of colourful lines immediately lure the eye and give it great pleasure, immense delight; the mirrors, talismans and sigils glitter and sparkle a festival of lights. Indeed, so carefully and so beautifully arranged is this act of faithful supplication that surely, to all that look upon it--angels, djinn and God Himself alike--it cannot be anything except a pleasure sublime.

 _For I loved to be known,_ Jaffar recites from the heart in awe: for being known by His creatures was what God had given as His reason for creating the world and all that live and move within it. _This, my love, is as pure a mirror for God to contemplate Himself by as can be humanly created,_ he whispers and squeezes Yassamin's hand. His eyes are dry of tears; there is only adoration, faith and peace. Indeed, it is said that nothing will result in a prayer being unanswered as surely as a lack of faith, an expectation that the thing being asked for would _not_ be possible or pleasing for God to accomplish; thus, if the minutest lack of faith is an insult to God, then surely the trust with which this magic circle has been built is an act of devotion purer than any shrine or mosque Jaffar has ever seen.

 _That's Latifa for you,_ Yassamin smiles.

 _Her glow magnified by yours, my angel,_ Jaffar says, marvelling at the neat interlocking triangles and concentric circles, recognising the sigils to have been drawn in Yassamin's own handwriting despite her belittling her efforts. _You two have done marvellous work, daughters of Zuleikha. The only thing that can fail us now is not God, but man._

_And that's what I'm worried about. What with your health--_

_Hush, my love. Come. Show me how it works._

_All right,_ Yassamin says. Despite her worries, she knows that Jaffar is right to focus on the task at hand: if at times infuriating, this is nothing but his old practice of anchoring one's self to the present, of being fully in the moment exactly so as not to sacrifice one's life to worry. They both have plenty to worry about, but this very moment, they and their families are here, together, safe and unharmed.

Therefore, Yassamin hugs Jaffar tight and with a deep sigh, summons the memory of Latifa from earlier that day, from when she'd demonstrated to Yassamin the different parts of the diagram and instructed her on how to operate in it, illuminating to her its workings.

"You know the talisman-windows from earlier," the vision of Latifa says as she sits before a mirror in one of the points of the star-shape, she facing the outer perimeter of the circle with her back to its centre.

Latifa draws her hand across the mirror and suddenly, the Grand Bazaar bursts into the room a riot of noise and colour and light: the loud sound of it in particular blasts into Yassamin's ears so violently that she jumps and covers her ears with her hands.

Immediately, Latifa draws down her hand as if pulling a curtain over the mirror, obscuring the hustle and the bustle of the market from their ears and their eyes. "I'm sorry," she winces. "I must mend the sound transmission on this somehow," she murmurs.

 _A simple vibration-filtering veil, but on Air's energy plane rather than Aether's--_ Jaffar interrupts, yet is immediately on the receiving end of glares from both vision-Yassamin and vision-Latifa.

 _I am sorry, my dears,_ he says sheepishly. _Please, continue._

Yassamin closes her eyes and focuses once again.

Now, the vision of Latifa turns around to face the centre of the circle. "What I've built today is a schematic of Afrasiyab itself," she says, pointing to the map in the middle with two fingers. She speaks a rune and taps at the centre of the map once, twice: the map begins to glow with a soft green light. Slowly, she lifts her fingers from it, dragging the glow upwards with her hand so that the map becomes three-dimensional, a transparent little building with all of Afrasiyab's rooms, doors, towers, stairs, its _everything_ replicated down to the minutest detail: a perfect duplicate of the palace itself, only in miniature. This, Latifa proves further by picking a room at random, to expand so that they might see its contents more clearly: she only has to pull out a room as if a drawer from a cabinet, to spread it out with her hands, and immediately, they can see everything down to the tapestries hung upon its walls.

"But that's fantastic!" the memory of Yassamin cries as Latifa folds the room back into the model.

 _She learned that from me,_ Jaffar grins against her ear.

 _I did wonder about that,_ Yassamin thinks. _And that's when she said she'd found your method inadequate, and improved it. Watch._

Indeed, Latifa now winks at the slightly insulted Jaffar. "You will like this, brother-in-law."

With a flourish of her hand and a tug of her little finger's nail, Latifa now throws open a door on a rooftop terrace: immediately, the sound of a flock of startled pigeons can be heard fleeing the very same rooftop of the castle proper, three floors above Yassamin and Latifa's heads.

"I don't believe it!" Jaffar sputters out loud. _But that must've taken an immense amount of psychokinetic energy. Surely, it cannot be feasible to maintain that level of physical control over the castle, at least not long enough for our purposes?_

_I asked her the same thing, my love. "Does that not exhaust you?" I asked. She replied:_

"Jaffar's model only allowed one to _observe,_ but considering our situation, we must be able to do more than that. I thought of how we could control the castle itself, without it requiring too much energy or manpower, and decided to focus on the most important thing: controlling people's movement within it. Hence, it was clear to me that we should focus on the doors. Now, I had already installed protective runes over all the doors and windows, years ago, to keep out unruly djinn; it was only a matter of altering those runes a little, changing their function, and linking them up to this model of the castle. As for the power required to control them psychically--it's all a matter of distance. Remember Archimedes and his lever?" she says and turns to Yassamin. "Were you there on the rooftop and were this door bolted and locked, you couldn't open it without having six men and a battering ram at your disposal; yet, render a spirit-duplicate _not in its actual proportions but in miniature,_ and it becomes as if a door on a doll's house, easily pulled open when you yourself are a giant in relation to it."

"I am not even going to ask how that's possible," Yassamin says, Latifa's gently smiling face the last thing they see as the vision fades and she returns to Jaffar.

"You don't have to," Jaffar grins. "You only have to believe in God, the way she does, and God believes in you. You know, I think it is her faith that is our rock of strength here; were we relying on people like Fadl and Zainab on something like this..."

Yassamin shudders. "Do not even speak of it! Zainab is still off sulking somewhere, probably debauching herself to exhaustion with her girls."

"I was going to ask you about that," Jaffar leers. "You never told me about the fun you girls had together while we were at the baths," he purrs and rocks his hips suggestively. "Come, there must have been at least a _little_ Lesbian orgy there that night? A tiny one?"

"I am still sore, if you must know," she moans into Jaffar's shoulder. "Or I was, until this medicine," she says, only realising just how much pain she had been in now that it's gone. "Her hands always look so tiny, until..."

Jaffar bursts into laughter. "I am glad," he says. "I mean, I am glad that you haven't felt deprived all this time I've been incapacitated. I'm sure I'll be back to my own self in no time."

"God willing," Yassamin hastens to add.

"God willing," he says and kisses her hand. "Has Fadl come back from the monastery yet?"

"I don't know," she sighs with exasperation. "He never visits the harem, even when I ask him to. I can only hope he isn't off drinking to try and soothe his nerves."

"I doubt it," Jaffar says. "He may be a fool, but not in matters of war. I expect he is still trying to find out more about his brothers at the monastery, to sort out the fanatics."

"Do you really think there aren't that many?" Yassamin asks.

"I am sure he can tell us tomorrow. Now, wife, I suggest we both rest," he says and pulls a blanket over them both.

"You haven't asked me about what the children got up to today."

_My throat's too sore; that's why._

_Then let me show you,_ she smiles.

Anwar, practicing his dance routine for the festival, waking up at daybreak and spending eight hours of his day dancing in the inner courtyard, dancing; his wicked cousin, Saif al-Din, trying to trip him over with a stick. But now, little Salsabil--having observed the scene from her painting-desk in the loggia above the courtyard--rushes to her brother's aid by dropping a full inkwell on the little bully's head. Saif al-Din running away wailing, covered in sticky, black ink, screaming about how he'd been attacked by djinn; Anwar saluting his sister with the finest of court bows, Salsabil saluting him with one in turn.

Jaffar curls up from his laughter, his eyes filled with tears of joy; _now my throat hurts even more!_ But he is proud, glad. _Those two do have a psychic connection._

 _As if there ever was any doubt!_ Yassamin nuzzles him, smiling. _And do you know what she said when Saif al-Din walked past her later, his skin still stained from ink here and there? She quoted that tradition you so love: "The ink of the scholar is mightier than the blood of a martyr!"_

Jaffar chuckles as loudly as one can chuckle telepathically. _They will grow up into the most revered scholars the Caliphate has ever seen. God willing,_ he adds before Yassamin can. _But now, wife, come: let's have a rest. We need it before our two little geniuses demand our attention once more._

 _God be with you, beloved husband,_ Yassamin says and kisses his throat, still radiating love and healing into him even as she falls asleep in his arms.


	10. Chapter 10

***

**The monastery**

***

"Atesh broke my faith," Abu Mohammad, the young Abdullah tells Fadl, staring at his folded legs. "He poisoned it and broke it, and I turned my back on the Muslim God." His voice is quiet but brutal; even if he is now spitting out that poison, the fact that he even dares admit such things out loud to his brethren is a self-flagellation so terrible, a self-humiliation so excessive that all the men in this room wince at it.

For all of them, like Fadl, have been brought up to fear nothing more than losing one's face: to regard being caught at sinning far worse a sin than sinning itself. No sane man would let such a confession fall from his lips unaided by wine, but here they are: a handful of the most devoted members of the Brotherhood, all of whom Fadl has invited to confer at the monastery tonight, all sick of the confusion that has been brewing here, now attempting to arrive at clarity.

Atesh has been lured away, Fadl having given him a false lead on something he would likely think as beneficial to his cause; this cause is what Fadl has now set out to unravel, interviewing the brethren about Atesh and his plans, what exactly it is that he's been feeding them.

And all of this is taking place under the Shaykh's watchful eye: the old man, unshakeable in his kindness and his mercy, remains a neutral observer even now. Even if it is clear, painfully clear to see that it is exactly thanks to this loving kindness of his, his principle of turning away none that a serpent has been sheltered upon his bosom for far too long, and that this serpent had mixed poison into the gentle milk of the Shaykh's lessons: turning bitter, sour, lethal that which had been meant to rejuvenate, bring life, heal.

But that _Fadl_ of all people should become the voice of reason, here, that it's he who's now taken on the role of the healer, the shepherd leading others out of sin and onto the pastures of clarity--this makes him reel inside, a hysterical laughter fighting sheer incomprehension within him, yet finally, grudgingly he's had to arrive at a deep humility at having been given this task of God's. He is no prophet, no saint; but perhaps it is exactly because he knows confusion and sin so well, knows selfishess, false pride and the blindness of the human mind so intimately that he is indeed a man fit to the task.

"I was under the impression that Atesh used faith itself to rally support for his cause. How did he come to break yours?" Fadl now asks Abdullah as they all sit in a circle, the Shaykh a little to the side on the dais that serves as his pulpit.

"By bending faith to his cruelty, his thirst for power," Abdullah says, looking at his hands, clenched into fists upon his knees. "I came to see scripture as nothing else--but an excuse for man's greed and cruelty, his striving to subjugate others. Yet I could not turn away completely--" his voice breaks as he looks at the Shaykh, but immediately turns away, as one does when unable to look straight at the sun. "The Shaykh's goodness was what kept bringing me back, even if doubt had now taken over my heart. Only by that thin thread of the Shaykh's loving kindness did I still manage to hang on to some kind of idea of God," he says quietly. "Of God as Love, not as--what that _dog_ did to my _children_ \--" and now he buries his face in his hands.

The man sitting next to him--Ubayd Allah ibn Nasir al-Ushrusani, a former general of Fadl's age--places his hand on Abdullah's shoulder, a hand fatherly, kind. "Atesh tortured his children," he now says to Fadl, taking up where Abdullah, whom he thinks of as his own son, had left off. "You were not here when Abdullah brought his son and daughter here to be blessed by the Shaykh. When Atesh... you have seen how he always hovers around the Shaykh, madly jealous of him, not wanting to let anybody near him? When Atesh saw the Shaykh kissing the children, blessing them and their favourite dolls, Atesh's entire countenance changed; all of you know the expression I speak of. His face twisted into a too-wide smile that was no smile at all, one that never reached his eyes: his eyes took on a cruel, glassy sheen that only looked inwards. It was terrible to behold."

There are murmurs of recognition from the circle; all know the exact look Ubayd Allah is talking about. Fadl, too, knows it all too well: it is the same expression Jaffar had reacted to with battle-shock, for one never sees that kind of face outside an act of violence, mental or physical. It is not the ordinary expression of a man defending himself, for often one can still see the human being underneath such, see his pain and his fear and his despair; Atesh's look is of one who has lost all traces of his soul--if he ever had one: it is the look of one who genuinely enjoys inflicting pain and suffering upon others. It's the cold and distant smile, the impenetrable glassy stare of a madman who will not hear anything that's being said to him, no matter how sensible or kind; of one who is locked away in his own world, obeying only his own idea of reality, beyond the reach of all reason, all.

"Atesh offered to take the children outside and watch over them while they waited for their father to finish," Ubayd Allah continues, "but I was at the door when it happened; I saw everything. Atesh took the dolls from the children, saying 'Do you want to learn a new game?' and leaned close to the children. Then, as the children watched, he proceeded to slowly rip out their dolls' eyes, rip out their stuffing--and he _savoured_ this, savoured the horrified looks on the children's faces, _laughed_ as they burst into tears," Ubayd continues, now trembling from rage. "'This is what you do to man-made images,' he said; 'they are abominations towards the Lord God,' he said and threw the dolls into the mud and spat on them. He remained standing there, taunting the children as they wept, as if he were nourishing himself with the children's tears."

"Why did you not _do_ anything?!" Fadl sputters, in shock; surely mere harmless toys do not count as idolatry.

Ubayd Allah but looks at the Shaykh, with a mixture of both respect and defiance. "Had The Heart of the Faith not stepped into the doorway that moment, they would have _carried that son of a bitch out on a stretcher._ "

Abdullah looks at the ceiling, blinking away tears. "And that's when I stopped coming to the meetings. They were but children; innocent beings. If they were idolators, vile heathens as they wept in my arms, then I would rather remain a heathen, I told myself," he says, swallowing a sob. "They still wet their beds in terror of that day, you know; they hide behind their mother's mantle when they see a man with slanted eyes. Forgive me for my unmanliness, my weakness; I have the heart of a woman, I know," he now says, burying his face in his hands once more. "But I could not bear it," he stammers; "I could not bear it."

"He is not the only one Atesh has humiliated," another man rushes in to explain, defending Abdullah. "When I returned from the pilgrimage, the Shaykh interviewed me for a long time, and for an entire evening, I told him about the wonders of The House of God. He gave me a beautifully bound, blank book and told me to write down my memories before I forgot them, and so that we might all return to read them later; overjoyed about having been given this sacred task, I asked Atesh to bring me some writing implements. But no sooner had I written down the first words in the Shaykh's book that I found that the ink was too thin and that it smelled sharp and bitter, like urine. May God strike me down if I lie, but someone had _pissed in my inkwell,_ " he spits, "and in that moment, I knew it had to be Atesh: no one else would have had the motivation; no one else would have wished to ruin others in the Shaykh's eyes."

Fadl is this close to tearing his shirt in outrage. That all of this would have been going on when his back was turned--it explains so much of what he's seen. So many of the brethren tiptoeing around Atesh, behaving like beaten slaves; the way Atesh has kept the Shaykh locked up in his chamber, using his old age and infirmity as an excuse. So many times when Fadl had himself been invited to spend an intimate evening with the Shaykh, only to be told by Atesh that he was too ill to accept visitors... oh, but it all makes sense, now.

Except for one thing. It is obvious that Atesh is mad; there's no question about it. "But..." and he has to ask this of the congregation. "But how on earth could even a madman expect people to join him in his cause, if he treated them so cruelly?"

"Because I have told them to endure him," the Shaykh now says; all eyes turn to him. "My children, I have told you to pretend that you were listening to Atesh, have told you to let him believe you were his followers, only so that I might find out what his exact plans were," he says gravely; even as Fadl's mouth falls open in surprise and disbelief, the Shaykh but raises his hand and continues. "It is true, my bull--but I forgive you your suspicions," he says with a melancholy smile. "I had been waiting, waiting for the day upon which God would reveal to me His plan on how to best deal with the matter, and on the day your brother arrived with the talisman, I knew that that day had finally come. Now, we know that Atesh is the messenger of Iblis himself and seeks to but wreak chaos upon this land. And that it is this man here," and he points at Fadl, "who will step in to prevent that; this man and his kin. Believe me when I say this, my children, but no one's heart has bled as much as mine when I have had to witness your suffering, your doubts. But this suffering will soon be at an end, and God will reward you and your families for your piety, for all that you've done; in this life and in the hereafter."

"God is great!" Ubayd Allah cries out, all men present in the room echoing his words. "What would you have us do?" he asks.

The Shaykh gazes slowly upon each and every one of the men gathered in the room; again it seems to Fadl as if he is seeing straight through them, as if they were but vessels of glass and that all their hopes and fears were clear for the Shaykh to see. And yet there is such love upon his face that it twists a knife in Fadl's heart; Abdullah has barely dried his tears before he seems ready to weep once more, this time from the Shaykh's love that now fills all that has been in his children hollow, warms everything that has in them grown cold, strengthening them against the future.

"God raises high those whom He pleases, and strikes down those whom He pleases," the Shaykh murmurs. "You know that I am about to appoint a successor, to transfer my powers onto a disciple so that he may continue to guide the Brotherhood as I have guided it. And all of you also know that Atesh fancies himself that successor, yearns to be the recipient of these powers. Now, my aim is--should it be God's will--to use this transfer of power to strike Atesh's wickedness out of him, to purify him once and for all. Now, listen very carefully. You all know that this following Friday, when the pagans are to celebrate Tiregan and we, God willing, are to gather here for prayers..."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: The operating board Jaffar uses for his automatons and other devices looks something like [this](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/173728982208/kissinthedreamhouse-divination-table-utilising) geomantic device. Similar tabulator devices were used centuries earlier to calculate horoscopes and the positions of the heavenly bodies for magical purposes, such as the engraving of talismans.

***

**Afrasiyab**

***

It is the day of Tiregan, and all of Samarkand is alive with festivities to welcome the first of this summer's rains: so hoped-for and yearned-for in this reign of oppressive heat.

In the gardens of Afrasiyab, splendid pageant follows splendid pageant: dancers in colourful garb weave their way past fountains spraying out an abundance of water-flowers, multitudinous in shape and form. The fountains, a dozen in number, gush out columns and shields and cascades of water in the shape of lilies, lilies-of-the-valley, violets, jasmine, narcissi; each flower in turn is painted, bespeckled by a series of moving, colourful lights from lanterns perched upon rotating clockwork wheels. The fountains and the dancers are accompanied by music made by a full band of clockwork minstrels: five beautiful brass maidens, each playing an instrument of her own, each slightly different in tone. In the middle of all this stands a great clockwork tree made out of brass, fully gilt: upon it perch all kinds of golden birds from the parrot to the crow to the humble sparrow, each moving its wings and tilting its body to peck at a fruit, the fruits themselves carved of real rubies and emeralds. And were one to approach the little pond of crystal and glass beneath the tree, one might even catch the gilt swan laying a sapphire egg.

All of these machines are carefully orchestrated by Jaffar himself: clad in bright white, he stands in a corner of the main courtyard in the middle of the garden, busy over an operating board of brass and wood with a myriad little labels and knobs--not unlike a horoscope tabulator. Instead of heavenly bodies, however, this board controls the world of his creations instead: dozens of different fountains and clockwork automatons performing a dazzling array of functions. He is glad of having finished the displays just in time, especially as he is still weakened by the remnants of fever, if only slight: most of the work here is automated, and he only needs to supervise their functions now and then by pulling a lever here, flicking a switch there, thank God.

This allows him to make the most of Anwar's dance of the living rainbow, the proud father glowing with joy as he watches his son leaping and cartwheeling and somersaulting across the square before the courtiers and Mohammad. The heights to which Anwar has honed this performance of his, all in the past few years, are astounding--all the more so for being the creation of a boy not yet nine. With each passing year, Anwar has been extending the duration of the dance, adding more and more elaborate movements to it, wielding the colourful ribbons tied to his limbs with seemingly effortless skill, as if he were himself made of colour and light. In his suit of brightly coloured feathers, he is become a sylph himself, a sprite over whom mere gravity holds no thrall; now, he dazzles the spectators by dancing out a rainbow-coloured river, now--with the aid of a little magic--dashing out all the ribbons around himself a halo, levitating them for but a moment so that they fan around him like the tail of a peacock. Now, he whirls and whirls a dervish until all the colours blur into a column of sparkling iridescence, his body made a spinning prism, bright; the human shape disappears and becomes only a whirlwind of colour, depicting the soul itself when it's freed from the body's bondage by the ecstasy of God.

Which brings Jaffar's mind to the Brotherhood once more. Oh, but he hates how the foolishness of man can so intrude upon such a manifestation of the sublime and the divine, cruelly dragging him back to the ground from such heavenly heights. His own son, brighter in spirit, higher in understanding than most men at the monastery ever will be; yet, now, the proud father has to abscond the performance, leave its glow and its joy and its spiritual nourishment for the darkness of the shabestan, to check upon the women and the defenses of Afrasiyab. But he has not the heart to reveal his leaving to Anwar: therefore, he leaves a double of himself, an image of himself to tend to the machinery to make it look like he is still there, even if his machines can, by this stage of the performance, perform all the necessary functions by themselves. After all, Latifa and Yassamin have done the same on the women's side with doubles of their own, so as not to arouse suspicion: in any case, they aren't expected to talk or move much during the pageants--if they even attend them, the harem usually arranging entertainments of its own.

Drawing a veil of invisibility over himself, Jaffar leaves the garden for the shabestan. It's on the other side of the palace underneath the harem, so as he makes his way there across the great vaulted hallways and vast chambers of Afrasiyab, he makes sure to check upon the most important parts of the building on his way. In the main hall, he passes by the throne-platform on which Mohammad is to sit upon, after the pageants have run their course: it's a grand affair carved from marble, large enough to seat a dozen people, bedecked with garlands and perfumed with incenses, sprinkled with aromatic herbs. Guards and pages stand waiting for Mohammad and his retinue to arrive, sweating underneath their armour and their trays full of gifts from the local princes, respectively; minstrel-girls tune their instruments behind an embroidered curtain drawn between the platform and the wall. The floor is strewn so thickly with rose petals that Jaffar has to walk very lightly so as not to give himself away; taking off his slippers and summoning forth all of his felinity, he treads softly upon this fragrant carpet as he surveys the room and exits it, as silently as he'd entered it.

"Finally!" Yassamin cries as Jaffar appears in the shabestan--or, rather, before he even appears, she always able to sense his presence whether he be visible or not.

Twiddling his toes to shake off rose petals from between them, Jaffar hops to the magic circle on one foot as he replaces his slippers. "I did not want to leave Anwar too soon. Isn't he wonderful?" he says and comes to embrace Yassamin from behind where she sits in one of the star-points, observing the courtyard through one of the mirrors.

Anwar is just finishing his dance with a dizzying leap into the air, suspending himself there with the aid of magic for just a fraction of a moment longer than an ordinary dancer could, his ribbons fanned out behind him so that for a moment, he becomes a Simurgh in flight. Time itself seems to stand still as he hovers there, dazzling all who look upon him, his little body straining with all its might; now, he lets go of the magic and plunges down like an arrow, fanning out his ribbons so that as he falls gently into his final pose upon the ground, he creates the shape of the great magic bird once more.

The crowd sits awed, marvelling, unable to believe their eyes: yet, as little Salsabil begins to cheer, all awaken and begin to applaud with their voices, their hands and their feet.

"Marvellous," Yassamin whispers and kisses Jaffar's hand, her own eyes filled with tears of happiness. "To think that but such a short while ago, he was still but a twinkle in his father's eye," she says, hugging Jaffar's arms about herself.

"And she, too," Jaffar says as Salsabil now comes to lead her brother out into the shade of a nearby cypress-grove, to where she's laid out a carpet, towels and sorbet; she is to perform later in the harem, singing to the noblewomen the latest collection of songs she has learned. "I still remember that night," Jaffar murmurs. "Do you know, I think it was simply because we were so happy that when we joined our twin happinesses that night, the body of one child could simply not have contained all the life and joy within us! So that's why God decided to give us twins."

"You always say that," Yassamin says and leans back into his embrace, sighing wistfully. Just like Jaffar, she would much rather be there with the children right now, but they have important work to do. "Latifa, how is the monastery?"

"Is Zainab not coming?" Jaffar asks, tucking his chin over Yassamin's shoulder.

"Apparently not," Latifa says sarcastically, not taking her eyes from the mirror she is sitting in front of. "She said she would only be in the way, and went off to sulk again. As for the monastery, the brethren are gathering just now; the Shaykh has not appeared yet and seems to be keeping them waiting. They all look rather restless, if you ask me."

"As if they weren't a restless lot to begin with," Jaffar mutters and with a sigh, lets go of Yassamin and comes to squat beside Latifa. "Show me."

All grow silent and barely breathe as they strain to hear the murmurs of the men gathered in the prayer room: they are murmurs of vexation, of unease and of doubt. Just as the dark stains and scratches here and there on the mirror now cloud its surface, so do the clouds of unhappiness and uncertainty now hover over the brethren a smoke noxious.

"I have a bad feeling about this," says one man.

"Is this wise?" asks another.

One even whispers: "The old man has gone mad."

"Have faith," Ubayd Allah murmurs sternly to the youths. "God knows best."

Nevertheless, his hand remains clasped tightly about his sword's hilt.

"Where are the Shaykh and Atesh?" Jaffar asks, only now realising he and the women are scrying into the prayer room from above the pulpit, and not through the Shaykh. "What's the Shaykh done with his talisman?"

Latifa frowns. "That's what worries me; we don't know what exactly it is that he has done with it, but he is still in possession of it, according to Fadl," she says and points to the mirror. "This is a new talisman; Fadl installed it today and the reason you cannot see him is that he is standing right underneath it. He said the Shaykh is planning to use his talisman as a part of the ceremony somehow, but that's all we know. Are you thinking what I am thinking, brother-in-law?"

"Of course..." Jaffar mumbles, tapping his lower lip. The Shaykh's talisman--since it was one associated with divine matters--had been the most powerful one of all, allied with the powers of lightning, the sky and the force the pagans had called Jupiter. The Shaykh, of course, would identify this power as coming from the One God; in short, the talisman is nothing less than a direct channel to the All-Highest. Once the talisman had come into contact with a soul as pure and as bright as the Shaykh's, it would have been stranger had it _not_ reacted with him in some kind of profound way. And now that the Shaykh has understood the nature of the talisman... "I see."

"I, however, don't," Yassamin interrupts, restless as she moves from one point of the star to another, trying to keep an eye on several places at once. "Explain to the less enlightened of us, I beg of you!"

"The old man saw an opportunity and seized it," Jaffar says, gazing at the thirty or so men gathered in the prayer room. "The power of God flows through that talisman--as you know, it flows through all of them in some way or another, but in the Shaykh's, it takes on a more direct, concentrated form. The Shaykh himself is already a channel of the divine; he and the talisman are both containers, as it were, and so far, we have only seen but glimpses of the power that's running through them both. Yet now, the Shaykh has been letting this power pool within himself; it is a sign of remarkable faith and physical fortitude that he thinks he can even contain it all. But he clearly isn't planning to do it indefinitely, if you know what I mean; he knows his life is approaching its end. This is the opportunity I speak of, the one he now aims to use for a worthwhile purpose. Right now, it's like he is trying to keep the entire sun in a box--if you allow for such a clumsy metaphor--and so far, he's only lifted the lid a little, has only allowed us to see small beams of the light within. And now, if God wills it, he is about to blow off the lid."

"He's going to direct the energy outwards, you mean," Yassamin says, her hand falling to her lap. "To be a conduit. My God..."

"Just as a high building attracts lightning," Latifa nods. "He is like unto a minaret, and the talisman the crest atop it, but waiting for a thunderbolt from the Almighty."

"But what's he going to do with it?" Yassamin cries. "All the people in that building--Fadl is in there! Is the Shaykh going to--"

"I think we are about to find out," Jaffar says grimly as the dark clouds of the brethren now part to let Atesh through. "God is merciful," he murmurs under his breath, the hair on the back of his neck raised with chills; "God is merciful."

The top of a white turban appears just at the bottom of the mirror; the Shaykh is taking his place with slow, heavy steps. He turns to face his disciples, and at the foot of the low dais that serves as his pulpit, stands Atesh.

Atesh, whose mind ripples against the Shaykh's, felt by the Shaykh so clearly and so powerfully that now all in the shabestan can feel it, too: the one-pointedness of it, the fervor of it, the vehemence of it so strong that all are taken aback.

With a nauseating rush, Atesh's state of consciousness now surges through Jaffar's mind: a red veil falls over his eyes as he speeds on with a singular velocity like an arrow released, on and on with a purpose fixed, sharp, adamantine. For a moment, Jaffar struggles to identify this mode of being, for it is to him strangely familiar; yet, it's only once he yearns to feel the death-rattle of a gazelle's throat between his teeth and anticipates the taste of blood bursting into his mouth that he recognises it for what it is. For it is the exact same state of consciousness, the exact same thrill a predator feels when it rushes in for the kill: it is what Jaffar has felt with Ishtiaq whenever they have been hunting together. The heady rush of it, the exquisite power of it so overwhelming that one becomes intoxicated with blood: the exact same experience Yassamin had forsworn long ago, so as not to one day wake up having torn her husband and her children to pieces.

And Atesh's eyes, the way they now look into the Shaykh's, impenetrably glacial amidst all his fire--all of Jaffar tenses and he trembles, shivers in nauseating terror, fright; his heart breaks into a gallop and a low noise of anguish emerges from his throat. For this is the same, terrible glassy sheen Jaffar had seen in Harun's eyes on the day he'd taken Jaffar's children and--

There's a soft slap upon his cheek. "Jaffar!"

Moonlike, Yassamin's blessed face swims into his vision from beyond fury's red clouds: the cool, white light of it dispelling the veils of madness from before his eyes. She squeezes his arms, pulling him down, anchoring him down with her will; her will and her love. "Focus."

"Thank you," he groans weakly, trying to calm down his breathing; with great effort, he draws up all his magical defenses about himself, erecting all those psychic walls he should have put up before he arrived here. Steeling himself, he pulls back from the situation as if adjusting a telescope, withdrawing further back, back; when he can finally look at Atesh from a distance, when he can finally see everything in its correct proportions, can he finally understand why his mind had taken him back to Harun.

For Atesh's is a madness not only Atesh and Harun share, but Atesh and Jaffar, too, share similar wounds: horrific memories of their loved ones being sacrificed to the caprices of tyrants. And the hatred, yes, the same venom of hatred burns acidic in both their veins alike, Jaffar once having been as great a madman as he; both have lived for but revenge, having vowed to avenge themselves upon those who had wronged them. Oh, but it sickens Jaffar to the pit of his stomach to know this would-be usurper so well, having himself usurped a throne, once upon a time: Atesh is that exact kind of man Jaffar could have gone to his grave as, had God not chosen to pour out to him His grace in the form of Yassamin's love. It's simply too terrible to think about; he can only hope that a similar outpouring of grace will now help turn Atesh off madness's path.

"In the name of God, the most merciful, most clement," the Shaykh now intones, after all have quieted.

Atesh stands before the Shaykh with his head held high, facing him with such radiant pride upon his face that God Himself must have seen this exact same halo about the head of Iblis at the beginning of time; these are the Shaykh's thoughts even as he welcomes Atesh with a kiss upon each of his fevered cheeks. Yet even in feeling this, the Shaykh is not blaspheming, not proclaiming himself God incarnate: on the contrary, he has become so emptied of his mortal self, so full of the Divine that nothing remains underneath his cloak except God. Who is it, then, that even thinks these thoughts? Jaffar does not know; perhaps it is Jaffar alone contemplating all of this, marvelling at the sight. Perhaps just as darkness and shadows give shape to matter and define light, so does Atesh's darkness now but enhance the Shaykh's glow, its purity, its might.

For a mighty glow it is, a glow majestic and sublime; a soft white radiance shining forth from the Shaykh, he finally having unveiled his light.

The Shaykh reaches for his chest and opens his tunic: light streams from the talisman, from his heart onto Atesh, and Jaffar and the women see Atesh's face from but inches away, illuminated with joy and delight. The light is so bright it's stinging Atesh's eyes, yet he keeps them open, tears streaming down his cheeks as he soaks in the light, becomes saturated with light, filled with light. This is his moment of triumph, the day he has waited for, striven for for so long: now, he will finally be recognised as the hero among men he is, exalted as their saviour, the one prophesied to lead the believers to the light, the light of freedom from slavery's night.

To the Shaykh, Jaffar and the women, however, Atesh looks so much like a little child, a child who has been searching for his father and has now been found: Joseph come to Jacob, God's falcon returning to its king's hand, the soul rising up at Judgement to meet its maker. At this moment, they cannot help but feel a fragile hope: a hope of this lost soul's salvation, of him finding peace, his restless spirit finally gathered to rest upon the Almighty's heart. To feel anything less would be to blaspheme, to doubt the power of God to wash a soul clean with His light.

The Shaykh has become but light, _light upon light:_ translucent, his flesh hollowed, his fragile body illuminated from within and without. Some of the brethren are but staring, some weeping, some fainting, yet all are awed as he reaches towards his chest once more, pulls out the talisman and now holds it before Atesh's eyes.

"This I bequeath unto thee, to purify thee and to charge thee," what is left of the Shaykh recites, his voice itself no longer human but an echo from somewhere in the spheres of angels on high; "this, I bequeath unto thee, to burn away the sheaths that cover thy soul, to burn thy heart hollow of all but God and His Beauty and His Might; to make of thy flesh a home for but Light."

Atesh rips open his shirt to reveal his chest. _Beloved,_ he says within his mind, forming the words with his lips so quietly only the Shaykh--and God--can hear: _My heart is Thine to ravish, Thine._

The Shaykh presses the talisman to Atesh's chest. A bright flash of light swallows them both, a pillar of flame, high, white; that pillar expands until all are blinded by its light.

Yet as soon as the light had appeared, it dissolves.

With a scream, Atesh collapses upon the dais and the Shaykh, the earthly frame that had contained him, is gone: but his turban and robe lie where he had stood, once.

There is no eclipse, no earthquake, no cataclysm: only stillness, calm, the warm light of approaching night.

Little by little, life returns to Atesh, to the pulpit where he lies, hunched over with his face buried in his overlong sleeve; his body begins to tremble. First, it sounds as if he were laughing, a child's laughter, a laughter glad, high. Then, his body begins to heave with the quietest of sobs, then sobs louder, and finally he lets out a wail hideous, terrible to hear. He springs to his feet so quickly that neither Jaffar, the women or Fadl can see his face, yet the faces of the Brotherhood tell them all they need to know: they are looking at someone horrifying, formidable.

Has Atesh been burned, seared in the face as well as in the soul? Jaffar wonders. For he can feel some kind of twisting, burning, pulling of the skin upon Atesh's face as the talisman now begins to transmit to them Atesh's consciousness directly.

When Atesh spreads his hands and raises them high, they are scarlet.

"My brothers," Atesh cries, as if in the greatest of prayers, a supplicant; he is so light-headed he can barely stand upright. "My beloved children, my beloved sons, my beloved fathers of the new aeon. At last our long journey is over; at last we have come to our birthright; at least we have arrived unto the day of our glory and our might!" he shouts, his voice breaking, shattering against the whitewashed walls. "At last we will break free of our chains; at last we will be free of our oppressors; at last we will become lords of the earth!"

Yet the faces in the crowd are sullen; Atesh is met with frowns, with glowers, with glares dark. No one dares raise his voice first, yet it is the silence that is to Atesh the most terrible thing of all: in this silence, an ugly fear creeps into him like an icy snake up his thigh, coiling inside of him, curling up inside of his stomach. That coldness spreads into his limbs, freezing them; a cold sweat rattles his body and the urge to stab, to maim, to slay rises in the hollow emptiness of his chest.

Traitors.

How dare they?

How could they?

How could they all be so blind?

Do they not know what they are doing to him?

Do they not know that what they are doing to him, they are also doing unto _themselves?_

Do they not know that they are coddling the oppressors, the very ones who would use them and then cast them aside?

Do they not know that in their silence, in their not challenging the tyrants, they are doing the enemy's work? That in their pigeon-livered meekness, they are become just like their dominators--themselves killers, slavemasters, rapists?

All that he has fought for--now betrayed, ignored, cast aside--all that has made him the man he is--

_The screams of women, children and villages afire, Arab horsemen ravaging all, tearing all asunder, all; old men trampled underhoof._

In the face of all this, they still care not one whit?

_Biting into Atesh's back, the metal scales on the armour of the Arab grunting on top of him, the blood running down, down, down between his child's thighs; the tearing pain inside of his guts, the vomit he is choking upon--_

Just like then, they've all abandoned him, the cowards: just like then, when no one answered when he cried out for help; some heard him, but no one cared. They but walked past him, or ran; as he lay there on the ground, in his vomit and the sperm and filth running out of his arse, they only looked at him in disgust, the exact same way these men do now.

He remembers the vow he made that day, the vow he had made to God, the Devil, because no one else would listen: the vow to have his revenge on them all.

Revenge becomes his God, retribution his prayer, his fantasies of the blood of his enemies his wine and his bread; these he sups upon in the emptiness of his slave's chamber, in the beatings of his owner, his master and mistress. Each new blow Atesh counts, marks in the books of his soul to pay back once he is old enough, big enough, strong enough; the miser has his coins, but Atesh's treasure is that of suffering, his wealth that of cruelty, his estates those of despair. This is the coinage he counts every day anew: the silver dirhams of bruises, the gold dinars of slurs, his wine cellars filled to the overflowing with the spit and refuse thrown at his face every day and every night. They say he is no better than a piece of shit, so that is what he will strive to be a master at, then, a piece of shit: a man evil and vile and cruel, never having been allowed to be anything else. And when his time comes, he will rub shit in the faces of all who'd heaped it upon him; then, they will know and see and feel what they'd done: how it feels like to be a slave. Through his suffering, he will make himself into suffering itself: knowing intimately, thoroughly, expertly all the ways in which to bring a man low, to torture, to humiliate.

When he had finally gained a foothold in religion--the religion of his oppressors, o, the irony!--through the Shaykh's kindness, through the power that the Brotherhood had given him, he had known his time would soon come.

Yet now, the time _has_ come; God has shown to Atesh that he is worthy of being avenged. For has God not crowned him with His light, for him to now go out and deal justice as he sees fit? Atesh thinks as he lowers his hands and takes in his flock.

These fools have just been shown a miracle, as good as anything they could find in their holy books, and yet they hesitate, falter?

Behind him, the sound of a sword being drawn.

Very well. It is time to show them another miracle, give to them a taste of the new power, the true power coursing in his veins; to give unto them of the fire that is Atesh, the fire he was named after, the fire that will purge this world.

Without looking behind himself, Atesh flicks his left hand at the man with the sword--for this scoundrel deserves no better than the hand with which one wipes in the privy--and a satisfying cry of shock answers him, a satisfying thump on the floor, the satisfying clatter of a sword, accompanied by a satisfying pain-groan.

"Fadl!" Yassamin screams.

"Do you wish for another?" Atesh cries out, louder, now; he begins to glow a little, a light now extending outwards from his body an aura. But the glow is no longer that of the Shaykh's white light, but a fire dark, volcanic, hellish, a red and black night: an incandescence dirtied, smeared by the veils of hatred and suffering about Atesh's mind. It is the heat of inflammation, of a fever deadly, high; a fire haloed by blackness, the blackness of noxious smoke and naphtha.

"Is that it?" Atesh asks and raises his hand high, the light now swirling around it, pulsing as red and as ugly as an angry wound, the pain he will now be glad, glad, glad to finally fling out of his self a weapon, out. "God has shown you His miracles, yet you did not believe," he quotes their holy book once more. "And theirs shall be hellfire."

Finally, Ubayd Allah steps out of the crowd and faces Atesh boldly. "We will not follow you, Atesh," he says. "And that is our final word on the matter. Repent, and perhaps God will have mercy upon you."

"Because we most certainly will not," Abdullah says, drawing his sword.

The entire room draws sword, axe, club.

Atesh's entire flesh flares in outrage, glows like embers, bright; he curls, twists and lets out a roar, a scream, a cry so horrible Jaffar has never heard the like. Jaffar can hear but one thought in Atesh's mind: _I will take the king alone, then. I will have him, then; I will have him myself, alone, tonight._

And then, in the blink of an eye, Atesh is gone.

Behind Latifa's back, the three-dimensional model of Afrasiyab flickers; a flock of pigeons takes off from the rooftop.

Crying out in shock, Yassamin leaps at the model. "He's here! He's on the rooftop! Latifa, _do something!_ "

"Fadl?" Jaffar asks, tapping at the mirror. "Fadl!"

"Go after him," Fadl groans from the floor, holding his right arm. "Don't worry about me. I've had worse," he hisses, pulling the singed sleeve of his tunic from his arm where Atesh had blasted it, wincing when a piece of skin comes off with it. "He burned my arm, but that cauterised the wound immediately; there's hardly any bleeding." He looks up at Jaffar, obviously appalled that he is still standing there. "What are you waiting for?! _Go after_ that son of a bitch!"

 _After him... after him..._ Jaffar shakes his head to clear it, Atesh's mind still hanging over his like a dirty, red and black scum; he feels his own fever returning, rising high, throbbing at his temples and behind his eyes. "Latifa..." he mumbles as he turns to the women, barely conscious of the commands Fadl is now barking at the Brotherhood. "Latifa!"

"I am doing everything I can!" Latifa says as she tugs and prods at the transparent green model, now pulling out the rooftop as if a tray, spreading it with her hands to expand it. "I can't see him," she says as she looks around, enlarging and shrinking parts of the rooftop as she goes, surveying them furiously with her eyes. "And by the looks of it, neither can the guards! Look at this fellow; he's completely oblivious!" Latifa says, poking a guard in the back with her finger so that he staggers, yet he only glances behind himself and resumes his position.

"Invisibility magic, then," Yassamin says, clasping her veil about her face. "My God... do you think he can slip through doors also?" she asks, yet winces as she realises how stupid a question that was: the madman is running around with the powers of a saint, is he not?

"Whether he can do it or not, I am not going to make it easy for him!" Latifa cries, feverishly pulling out rooms and peeking into them, then replacing them as if boxes on a transparent cabinet. "Even if I have to pull the entire castle apart!" she declares as she yanks upon carpets, tips over entire beds in the rooms surrounding the rooftop, even scattering hot coals from braziers on the floors to block Atesh's way. "Jaffar, can you see him at all?"

Yassamin turns to look at Jaffar, who she realises hasn't said anything for long moments.

In fact, he is kneeling with his hands upon his thighs, staring furiously into nowhere, his chest heaving, his face gleaming with sweat; it's as if he were running, or under some other kind of great exertion.

"Jaffar!" Yassamin cries, shaking him by the arms, fearing the worst. "What's the matter? Can you see him?"

"I _am_ him," Jaffar croaks, panting, his entire body shivering as if wracked by the most painful of muscular cramps. "Oh, my God..." he doubles over, retching, gagging. "He's too strong... I..."

 _It's true, then,_ Yassamin thinks, horrified. There's been a breach in Jaffar's psychic armour, perhaps due to Jaffar still being too weak from his illness to take on something like this: just as pneumonia can follow at the heels of a mere cold, so has Atesh's rage managed to soak through Jaffar's defenses and now their consciousnesses have again melded, making him feel what Atesh feels.

"Jaffar!" she cries, thinking to go inside of Jaffar's mind, to drive Atesh out--but immediately, she realises that it'd be far too dangerous for her to initiate any kind of telepathic contact with him, now: she cannot risk being overwhelmed by Atesh herself, being pulled down with his undertow.

With a brutal deliberation, her mind snaps into a mode of cold, strategic logic that terrifies even her: yet she must think tactically, now, and push her feelings aside in order to help her husband, to stay on top of the situation. Besides, even in his weakened state, Jaffar's own magical skills are still formidable, surely Atesh's match--did the Shaykh not say Jaffar's spirit-gifts surpassed even his? And if Jaffar can see through Atesh's eyes, he can also tell them where Atesh is, and they can use this for their advantage.

Therefore, Yassamin snatches her hands off Jaffar's arms. "Where are you? What do you see?"

But it is then that the air is pierced by a triumphant cry from Latifa. "I've got him!" she shouts when a tapestry she's just pulled off the wall covers a huddled, moving figure: Atesh may be invisible, but now there's a distinctly man-sized lump underneath the tapestry, struggling to free itself. "The gallery over the music room, second floor!"

Jaffar shakes his head. "I don't know where I am," he slurs, as if drunk. "I don't know where the throne room is. I... I must find the throne room."

He can feel but fire. Fire in his lungs, fire in his flesh, fire in his veins, fire in his head, beating against his skull from the inside. With an anguished cry, he burns himself free of the tapestry and springs up, aflame; two guards, having spotted the flames, are running towards him, running--and as he waves his hands and gives to them of his fire, they are no longer running. They lie upon the ground, scorched, dead; the smell of charred hair and flesh sickly-sweet in his nostrils as he leans down to look at them--

\--and there, there; the guards have dropped at his feet his gift.

For it is indeed a gift that now lies before him, a true sign of divine guidance, a Sign for those who believe: "God is great," Atesh murmurs as he leans down to pick it up.

For unto him have come a crossbow and a quiver of arrows.

For it is indeed said in the old prophecy that from above, from clouds like mountains, a young saviour will come: to liberate all those who are suffering under the yoke of a tyrant. Yea, a saviour unto them shall come, a saviour whose destiny it is to slay the tyrant, to slay him with an Arrow of Justice.

He takes the bow and the arrows and runs, for the time is nigh.

Women shout behind him--"Jaffar! Jaffar!"--

And for a moment, Jaffar remembers himself. "He's headed for the throne room. Oh, God. He didn't know where it was, but he must've picked it up from me," he groans, holding his head in his hands. "Close the doors, Latifa! Close the doors!"

But Latifa is already doing so. Atesh runs, and door after door slams in his face, window after window; yet still he runs on in the maze that is Afrasiyab, laughing wildly as he crashes his way through these miserable, pitiful defenses with his might. One ram from his shoulder, one blast of fire from his hand dissolves door after door after door, until he is--

Why is he here? Atesh wonders as something, like the hand of another, guides him to a small room adjoining the great gallery that runs above and along the throne room, on the castle's second floor. He looks around this room and at the end of it, he can see a narrow, spiral staircase leading up to what seems like a tower: a staircase he knows he has to climb up to fulfill his plan. Even if the spirit-hand is leading him away from the throne room below the gallery, away from the celebrations, away from where the sultan's retinue is now arriving, Atesh does not question it: this guidance must be God's.

 _I am as if a corpse in a washer's hands, my Lord,_ he thinks joyfully as he climbs higher and higher, past playing children who cannot see him. About him, there's the smell of baking bread, of sweet delicacies, the smell of woodsmoke: this must be why the children are in this tower, then--the giggles he hears from behind himself are now interrupted by the sounds of glad munching. And now, he realises why this is: for this little room has been converted into a kitchen for the festival, since it has a fireplace and even a chimney, a jolly fire burning bright; the spiral stairs lead Atesh behind and around the chimney higher into the tower, and as he braces his hand upon its cylindrical inner wall, it's hot.

What will he find at the top?

Ah. It is an observation room, one of those many hiding-holes he has heard of in stories told in tea-houses: one of those secret rooms with hidden windows, from which one can see what happens in the great halls below, without himself being observed.

Indeed, God has led him to the greatest of vantage points from which to observe the festivities, and from which to accomplish his great task: he gazes out from the window, hidden behind some ornament or another, strings his bow with an arrow and waits for the sultan to arrive.

"Latifa, we've got him! Hurry! Close the window!" Yassamin cries.

"I'm going to pull down the chimney," Latifa says, pressing brick after brick after brick to loosen them from the wall; she strains as she holds them still, so that she might gather a big enough mass to crush Atesh with--

There's a noise behind Atesh, and he turns around to see what it might be.

Children.

Two children in the doorway, staring at him: a little girl and a little boy.

Both have pale blue eyes, wide with shock; the girl with a curious cap, meticulously embroidered. The boy wears an equally curious tunic, one with colourful feathers sewn onto it.

No.

These little devils cannot interrupt him now! Not now, when he's come all this way!

His fire rises in him, Atesh the man made of fire, and he traps the children at the door simply by setting the stairs behind them on fire. He raises his bow and his arrow; he loads the arrow with fire, too, just to make sure nothing will remain of these two; no little corpses to tell the tale. He has enough arrows, enough for target practice, and oh, but would you look at the way the little ones are shaking, weeping--he so loves seeing children cry--he waits for a while, relishes this moment, for he loves making children suffer, just as he has suffered--

Jaffar lets out such a high scream that the entire shabestan rings; he springs to his feet and begins to recite the spell to roll up the earth, to travel through the air.

"Jaffar, no!" the women cry simultaneously.

"I am not going to watch my children be slain for a second time!"

And he is gone.

He is in the tower, yet he finds himself at the lowestmost of its floors, having misjudged the distance; he wants to be sick. _Not again, not again,_ his mind screams as he runs and runs up the stairs, as Atesh steps back and takes aim at his children, _my beloved, my only children;_ Jaffar is running up, up, his lungs burning, his fever high, _my clever, clever children; you will go far in the world one day,_ and he will faint, faint, fall and his head is screaming, screaming like _his children had screamed as Harun's men had taken them_ ; he hurts so much he cannot even breathe any longer, suffocating, _just as the children had suffocated to death when Harun had had them buried alive_ \--

He sees the children through Atesh's eyes, still: the children now enveloped by the fire roaring behind their backs and the fire that is Atesh, a man ablaze, afire. 

Salsabil is clutching at her veil, terrified; the flames grow higher, higher and there's the smell of urine--Anwar has wet himself--

And now, Jaffar is at the door, sweeping down the flames with a dousing rune. He sees himself through Atesh's eyes, a tall, thin man in white, a man haggard, a man who has to lean against the doorframe with both hands to balance himself; a man whom Atesh now aims his arrow at instead.

Atesh, all visible, now, all red and aglow with hatred, terrible to behold: his lips parted in a hideous grin, his eyes ice.

Yet, now, a sudden pain pierces Atesh's back, a pain stabbing upwards in his chest, twisting, burying itself deeper, coring itself towards his heart--

Jaffar yanks himself out of Atesh's consciousness just as the tip of a sharp needle emerges from Atesh's chest.

Shocked, Atesh stares into Jaffar's eyes as his bow and his arrows fall from his hands, clattering onto the floor; his look is that of a surprised child.

Atesh lifts his hand to his chest, looks down at the needle protruding from his heart, but it is too late: the light in his eyes dies.

Atesh collapses onto the floor lifeless, dead.

Behind Atesh, with a bloodied packsaddle-pin in his hand, stands Attaf the Baker's Son, horrified.

Anwar gasps and falls over, unconscious.

Salsabil remains staring at Atesh, staring at the blood now pouring onto the floor from the corpse's mouth, watching the pooling blood with fascination, even as it spreads down to engulf her little slippers.

Attaf's astonished face is the last thing Jaffar sees before he, too, collapses; lights dance in his eyes, then all turns black and he follows Anwar into unconsciousness.


	12. Chapter 12

*** 

**Afrasiyab**

*** 

It is only on the following day that Mohammad even finds out what has taken place, how he had barely survived an assassination attempt without his knowing it: wisely, he chooses not to divulge this matter to his courtiers--or to the rest of his subjects, for that matter.

And thus it comes to pass that today, as the court gathers to witness the honours, only the Barmakids and Attaf himself truly know what the brave young baker is being rewarded for: in honour of having 'distinguished himself in service to his sultan,' he is awarded the sum of a hundred thousand silver dirhams, a position for life as Afrasiyab's head baker, and well-furnished apartments at the palace for his wife and his six children, all of them beside themselves with joy.

The packsaddle-pin that had saved his life, Mohammad gives pride of place in his garden, another wonder amidst all of Jaffar's clockwork ones: he has the pin mounted within a golden frame, with the words "God is Great" engraved upon its marble pedestal. Let the people wonder what this display is for, what spiritual mystery it might be hinting at: already, the clerics and the poets are feverishly debating its metaphysical meaning, concocting elaborate philosophical explanations for its symbolism. The most popular theory at the moment is that it's a metaphor for the soul's attaching itself to the robe of the All-Highest, so as to never be lost from His presence during the ardurous journey of life.

Mohammad but chuckles into his beard as he overhears these debates and continues on his way, whispering a quiet prayer of gratitude to the Almighty for having been allowed to survive, to continue ruling over his now-pacified land.

Besides, Mohammad has other important personages to attend to: namely, his beloved queen. He had always called Latifa his patron saint; now he _knows_ she is one! What she had accomplished with the model of the castle had made Jaffar's magics look like mere parlour tricks, he thinks; the least Mohammad could do is reward her handsomely for her efforts. Already he has drowned her in treasures confiscated from the rebels' houses: crystal ewers, silvern aquamaniles, candles perfumed with real ambergris; yet, for a man as busy as a sultan, it is the gift of intimacy that's a valuable rarer by far, its worth surpassing even that of the finest of luxuries.

Yet it is Latifa herself who is his greatest treasure, she the Simurgh's wing extended over him in protection, over him and the entire land: as he toes off his slippers and enters her bedchamber, he feels giddy from the joy of being alive, giddy from the sight of but her back as she sits upon her bed in her new silk mantle.

As the harem-eunuch closes the door behind Mohammad, Latifa turns around and casts off the mantle.

"Come, husband," she says to him as she stands on the opposite side of the bed with her arms outstretched, grinning widely. "How do you like it?"

For now, she stands before her husband not in a suit of queen-fabric, but in the plain, simple garb of a stable boy. She cocks her head, sending her side-locks bobbing underneath her jaunty little cap, her hands now coming to brace themselves upon the hips of a pair of riding breeches-- _very_ tight, as is the Sogdian fashion--and a short tunic so light Mohammad can see her nipples pointing through it. Freed from their usual tight vest, her breasts jiggle charmingly with her chuckles as she bites her lip, trying to hold in her laughter.

"Well!" Mohammad laughs, his giddy joy taking on an altogether new shape and flavour; his heart and his loins flash with heat, curls of desire wrapping about his body, at once stirring his muscles with shivers of pleasure and readying them for an impending leap. "God is great," he murmurs, his eyes taking fire from hers, their souls never less than two flames of the same lamp.

She looks thirty years younger, he thinks; he feels himself a youth.

"God is great, but so is my wonderful wife," he adds. "And here, I had come to greet a woman holy, a great shaykha! I had meant to fall at your feet and kiss them, to ask you to bless me with your spirit-gifts; yet saints move in mysterious, at times scandalous ways, do they not?" And now his grin makes his face ache; he cannot remember the last time he'd smiled so much.

"They do indeed," she laughs, like tinkling bells.

"Aren't you going to give me a twirl, my little dervish?" he asks her playfully.

"All right," she laughs. She raises one of her arms towards the heavens, points another towards the ground and begins to turn slowly, indeed like a dervish about to spin.

Yet, immediately, she realises this for but a trick on his part, to get her to turn her back: imitating a hunting-pard, Mohammad lets out a playful growl, leaps onto the bed and pounces her.

Latifa lets out a squeak and runs from him, both of them giddy with delight; laughing, shrieking, chuckling, tussling, merry lover chases lover into the arms of the night.

***

***

After the end of the festival, Jaffar and his family pack up and leave for their own Blue House, their hearts gladdened by the cooling sight of its sea-coloured walls; Zahra and Sonbol joke that now _they_ are being usurped, having got so used to being its lord and lady. Jaffar and Yassamin have brought them the most wondrous of gifts as thanks; but as Yassamin takes in the shining clean courtyard and the freshly painted walls, she feels--as usual--that they are doing a better job of running the household than she is! Yet Zahra rushes in to tell her that it's only thanks to the little rascals having been away that she, Sonbol and the others had finally had some time to do a little tidying up; the same little rascals now cannot keep from climbing her and Sonbol, moved to tears of happiness from being reunited with their best friends once more.

Fadl stops by The Blue House, too, to have his arm treated by Jaffar's magic gum and wound-healing ointment before continuing on his journey to New Lesbos. Shirtless, he sits perched in the guest room's raised bed-alcove as Jaffar mixes him jarfuls of both gum and ointment, so that he may take some home with himself.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have Zainab kiss it better?" Jaffar smirks as he taps and drags his wooden knife against the jar's mouth, wiping excess ointment from it.

"Who says she won't?" Fadl grins as Jaffar begins to spread the ointment onto his arm with the knife, but as soon as he's started, Fadl interrupts him mid-daub. "Wait! Don't apply it too thickly--there, leave a little gap right there, so that that bit will heal naturally; so that it'll leave a little scar."

When Jaffar and Yassamin look at him askance, he sighs and rolls his eyes as if he were explaining the obvious. "So that she knows I truly _did_ get myself wounded while trying to stop Atesh! That I risked my life defending this city--and her precious New Lesbos with it!"

Yassamin gives his war-torn body a long look. "You have enough scars to boast with already, brother-in-law," she says. "I doubt you need a new one."

"No, but you don't understand," Fadl mumbles, staring at his feet, with which he now kicks restlessly like a schoolboy as they dangle off the edge of the high bed. "It's the first one I got for _her._ "

Jaffar and Yassamin exchange looks. To think that after all this time, Fadl is still jealous of Zainab's women, still wanting to prove himself in her eyes!

"All right, then," Jaffar says and begins to scoop a line of ointment off the burn. "Do you want me to draw it in the shape of her initials? You can always tell her that it took on that shape naturally; that you are so consumed with thoughts of her that even your skin heals in the shape of her name."

Jaffar means it as a joke, but Fadl keeps on staring at his boots. "If you think it will help," he sighs.

"Whatever became of those Chinese rogues at the paper mill?" Yassamin says pointedly, changing the subject as Jaffar begins to work his art; it was Fadl and his warrior brethren who'd taken over the task of tying up any and all loose ends.

"Oh, they went quiet," Fadl says with a dismissive wave of his good arm. "Quiet as dormice after they discovered the true extent of Atesh's madness, and when they realised their 'army' turned out to be nonexistent. The last I heard, they had run away God knows where, and Lina was planning to take over the mill." He flinches, but not thanks to the wound; it's only that it's impossible for him to disguise the distress he feels at the very mention of Lina's name, she being both his greatest rival for Zainab's affections, but also someone who exerts a great deal of allure over Fadl himself.

"Would you stop squirming, brother!" Jaffar sighs, exasperated. "Unless you want to show up at her house with a tattoo of a prick on your arm."

"What about the queen-fabric?" Yassamin asks, to try and change the topic once more.

"I have sorted it out," Jaffar says darkly, not looking up from his work.

"No, I mean the story of how it got here," she says. "Are you _sure_  that it was the real thing, and not some mere counterfeit?" It wouldn't be the first time commoners had sought to imitate the fabrics of the elite: even Attaf's sleeves had had hand-painted tiraz bands, in imitation of the genuine gold-embroidered ones the noblemen of Baghdad wore on their arms. Besides, if the bazaar's buyers and sellers had never seen real queen-fabric in the first place, how on earth could they possibly tell the difference between an imitation and the genuine article?

"Feng the Elder had bribed the bandits on the China road," Fadl says, "to try and get them to join the rebellion. He tried to buy their services with the Indian swords he was carrying on his caravan, but the bandits were far more interested in the swords themselves rather than Atesh's miserable one-man conspiracy. First, the bandits convinced Feng that they were keen to participate; they held a great feast for him and treated him like a prince, even gifted him with some valuable loot he could fund his rebellion with. And that's how Feng the Younger got hold of the queen-fabric--the whole market stall was but a ruse, but a base for their operations."

"That explained a lot," Jaffar says as he stirs the gum with a spoon, "including why Feng the Younger didn't know a thing about fabrics."

"But wait, wait; this is the juicy bit," Fadl chuckles. "Just when Feng thought he had the bandits on his side and came to take them to the monastery for Atesh's accession, the rascals were nowhere to be seen! The whole camp-- camels, horses, treasures--spirited away as if by djinn; they just took the swords and ran! To think of it--one bolt of silk for thirty swords, when Indian steel is worth ten times that!"

Yassamin blinks. "But that doesn't make any sense! It's the other way round," she says, astonished, looking from Fadl to Jaffar and back again. "That silk is the most expensive fabric ever made! A bolt is worth at least _a hundred thousand_ Indian swords! When my mother first had suits made from it, I was told that only four women in history could ever have afforded it: Khayzuran, Zubayda, my mother and I. She had to sell one of her palaces to get just one bolt!"

"I know," Jaffar grins. "That's why I gave you some as dowry," he says, the suit he'd given to Yassamin upon his ship having had a veil made of the very same fabric. Now, the happy memory of her standing upon the deck of his ship fills his mind; the way she'd smiled there with her silks billowing in the wind, a Yassamin joyous as he'd submitted to her command and ordered the ship to sail back to Basra--

"Nevertheless, they were _excellent_ swords," Fadl interrupts tersely, trying very hard to ignore the fact that he, the self-professed man of fashion and exquisite taste, had undervalued the price of the fabric so atrociously. " _I_ would have sold a palace to get but one of those swords," he says and now, his face breaks into a rogueish grin, too. "Thankfully, we didn't have to; when we raided Feng's house, I made sure to get the best one. And a couple of spares, just to be sure."

"As for the fabric," Jaffar says as he heats up the gum by casting a rune over the jar, "well, you can guess where it ended up."

Yassamin rolls her eyes. There's only one woman here who could afford it, even at a cut price--even Yassamin herself couldn't afford it; not any longer. "It's just as well. I've had enough of that fabric for a lifetime," she says, even if that makes Jaffar's face fall slightly. "It looks silky to the eye," she explains, making a rubbing gesture over her arm, "but when worn against bare skin, the little particles of pearl and crystal are hideously scratchy. It always gave me a rash within an hour of wearing it."

"And now, it's doing that to Zainab." Fadl chuckles. "Between you and me, I thought the one bolt wouldn't be sufficient to cover all her charms, at least in a decent manner, but what do you know--she even had enough left over for her favourites! I expect the little gazelles to be glittering as they walk, right now, frolicking in her gardens like shooting stars..." he sighs dreamily. "Are you done yet?" he glances at Jaffar and his arm impatiently. "I said I would make it there by nightf--FUCK!"

For now, Jaffar has poured the hot gum onto the poultice, and Fadl screams so loudly he frightens the horses outside. "Fuck! Fuck! Bastarding sodomising mother-sucking--oh, God!" he cries. "I'll never get used to this damn thing," he winces, "never."

"I said, _hold still!_ " Jaffar says, grabbing Fadl's arm. "Just wait for the tingling to go down and we'll see if it turned out all right."

"God willing," Fadl grumbles, "God willing."

***

***

That night, when Fadl has left The Blue House with what he hopes is an impressive scar on his arm, the long-awaited summer rains finally arrive.

The rills of the garden and the gutters of the rooftop are all overflowing, only Jaffar's elaborate network of channels and pipes sparing the house and its inhabitants from a minor deluge; even the djinn that ordinarily dwell in the underground water-tunnels come to huddle in the stables instead. Jaffar allows them this, on the condition that they don't bother the horses; despite the djinns' vows to leave them be, he nevertheless casts a protective spell over the animals and their fodder to be sure.

As Jaffar walks back to the house proper, his shoes wet and with a tray over his head for an umbrella, he is glad to observe that for the majority of his household, the rain is a festival of delight. For in the garden and the courtyard, Zahra and the children are running and shrieking and frolicking with the rest of the maids and eunuchs, all of them dancing and singing and having the time of their lives; it's as if they were all flowers bursting into bloom, singing their joy to the heavens.

Only old Sonbol is missing, and as Jaffar comes upon him in the antechamber of the house, he realises it is for a good reason that he has not joined the celebrations.

For now, Jaffar finds the elderly eunuch is struggling with a great dripping, squirming, blanketed bundle in his arms, a bundle he is trying to carry upstairs all by himself: a bundle that turns out to contain a miserable, soaking wet Ishtiaq.

"Let me help," Jaffar says; they begin to rearrange Ishtiaq into the blanket to better carry him. The poorly cheetah doesn't struggle; he but lies there and lets himself be handled like a cub, as if he understood he was being helped.

"What happened?" Jaffar asks.

"He was having as much fun as the little ones out there, until he slipped on the wet tiles and sprained his leg," Sonbol explains. "Or two. Or something else. I was going to take him to Zahra's room to check. He was as you find him: he was leaping about with the children one moment, limping and slumping the next."

"But he's shivering!" Jaffar murmurs as he and Sonbol pick Ishtiaq up with the blanket--Jaffar _could_ have levitated him with a spell, but is reluctant to do so after having just cast such a powerful spell upon the stables. He'd rather use what's left of his magical strength to heal the ailing pard, should Ishtiaq be in need of help beyond what ordinary veterinary medicine can provide. Indeed, Ishtiaq remains so still that the men can carry him easily on but the outstretched blanket, holding one corner in each hand as they climb up the stairs sideways.

"Let's take him to Yassamin's bedroom instead," Jaffar says, "she has the fireplace."

"To hear is to obey, mas--Jaffar."

Jaffar forgives him this little stumble, smiling; for a long while, now, he and Yassamin have been pleading for Sonbol and Zahra to address them by their first names, insisting that they are all friends here--partially because of how much it scandalises Fadl and Zainab, but also because it's the truth.

Yassamin was already in her nightgown, half asleep in her bed; but when she discovers Ishtiaq's plight, she springs into action and fusses over him more than anyone. She arranges for him a bed out of her best cushions in a cot beside the fireplace, making him poultices out of the magic unguent and applying them herself. Thankfully, Ishtiaq only seems to be suffering from sprains and a touch of the cold, so that their main concern remains to keep him rested and warm; they spend a great deal of effort to make him as comfortable as possible.

After some grunting and yanking and twisting and ramming, Sonbol finally gets the vents of the chimney in working order. Jaffar has mercy on them all and uses a little of his magic to banish the soot, dust and ash that threatens to billow out of the fireplace, so that all might breathe--and moreover, not stain all their clothes, carpets and furniture the way they'd done when they'd first moved here and had tried to understand the chimney's workings. To think that a blocked chimney had been their salvation just the other night! For it had been thanks to _that_ that Attaf had been in the tower at that fateful moment, trying to open a stuck vent with the packsaddle-pin that had ended up saving all their lives. And here, Sonbol being just as brave as he finishes arranging the fire, coughing: Jaffar pats him on the back and gives him a gold dinar for his efforts.

"It's all right, Sonbol," Yassamin says with a hand on his shoulder; "go and get yourself something to eat; I'm going to retire for the night."

"Rrrr-iuk?" Jaffar churr-chirps at that "I" of hers, in imitation of Ishtiaq's laments, making his eyes enormous and sad.

" _We_ are going to retreat for the night, the poorly little pard and I," she laughs when Sonbol bids them goodnight. "And Ishtiaq," she grins as she turns to Jaffar.

Jaffar laugh-groans and gives her a tight hug, lifting her from the ground and squeezing her by the waist until she squeaks. "Come here, my poorly old wife," he sighs into her shoulder. "I have a mind to retreat somewhere warm, too," he purrs suggestively until she laugh-groans back.

"Close the windows, first," she says, kissing his nose when he finally lets her down.

The rain is now more of a light drizzle than a downpour, but he closes the heavy window-panels nevertheless. "There might be a colourful sunset still," he says as he secures the latches, as Yassamin slips into bed. "I would we did not miss it."

"I would rather watch you," Yassamin murmurs, her arms raised out to Jaffar as he makes his way to the bed, divesting himself of his damp clothes as he goes. "I was so afraid for your sake," she says as Jaffar curls up with her underneath the quilt; his head upon her heart, he lies there as naked as a babe, as tender as the cheetah now dozing happily at the foot of their bed. "You still have a touch of that fever left," she says as she caresses his forehead, her eyes flickering as they regard his.

"Not really," he murmurs and laces her fingers with his. "If I feel feverish to the touch, it's because I lie in the arms of the most beautiful woman in the world," he says with a playful rock of his hips. "I cannot very well be expected to remain unaffected."

"I'm feeling amorous myself, but I'm also exhausted," she sighs. "I was almost asleep when you arrived," she says and yawns.

That yawn infects Jaffar, who now stretches in her arms, then moves behind her to spoon her. "The will is strong but the body is weak," he sighs into her shoulder. "Admit it, we are both merely getting old."

But if anything, the terror of her nearly having lost her Jaffar now makes Yassamin feel guilty for each moment she has wasted not kissing him, embracing him, making love to him; he can feel this thought radiating from her mind to his.

"I would share pleasure with you," she says and clasps his hand over her heart. _We will just have to do it in spirit,_ she whispers into his mind.

 _And there is no greater joining than that of the souls,_ Jaffar swirls his thoughts into her mind, banishing all guilt for the limitations of their bodies: their souls have but grown stronger with age, nourished from each other's love. And now that each has grown such deep roots into the other, they live in an ever-renewing cycle of love and strength, each to the other both the nourishing earth and the sheltering sky.

The sky, the sky, the benediction of summer's rain: like the rain falling over eaves and leaves, he now flows pleasure over her body a river, sluices pleasure down her spine a rivulet; just as the earth had yearned for this kiss of the heavens, sighing in joy as the skies had opened and poured forth their love, so does Yassamin now moan and tremble and stir as he cascades deep, deep, deep into her body and her soul and her self. Just as the rain kneads open the hard ground and caresses it into yielding, filling out furrows and loosening loam, so does her body now unfold itself unto his touch, swelling and moistening and taking on a sweet lassity, laxity, languor. No longer the languishing of fatigue and exhaustion, only a sensual buoyance unhurried: suspended in him, she uncurls and unfurls and lets herself be slowly carried away by her wellspring's flow.

Jaffar, in turn, feels once more enfolded by petals, petals sighing softly about him a sea: petals of rose, peony, jasmine, lotus, flower upon flower all pink and red and white. Letting out a long groan of satisfaction, he stretches against her back, his every muscle trembling as he tenses there, vibrating with pleasure like an instrument plucked, struck, blown. He is erect against her back, gliding desirous against the silken down of it, bathing in the exquisite touch of so much of her skin against his. Yet he is in no hurry to penetrate, thrust, take; the older he gets the more he prefers this slow lingering, abiding--

Yet now, it is not for him to decide. For presently, Yassamin surprises him and takes his prick in her hand; whispering the womb-sealing spell with the swiftness of the prayers of those in agony, she now guides him inside of her cunny. She is as hot as a furnace on the inside, so wet that she slides all the way down upon him easily, stuttering and keening through her teeth as she grinds herself down onto him.

"I'm sorry, but I--" she moans, her cunny clenching around him as if she had no control over it. "It's all your fault." Now she is wide awake, never having realised her desire could flash and flare so high tonight; yet she is so aroused that her womb is aching, the walls of her sex are aching, all of her hips are aching with a tight, taut, pulsing heaviness that is agony, all but screaming to be massaged by his prick. All of her flesh is desperate for release, now; a deep, deep orgasm from the darkestmost depths of the womb, the kind only a prick's pressing against it can give; now, those deepestmost of seismic ripples are the only thing that can release all the hot, heavy blood trapped in her hips.

He churr-chuckles against her back, again imitating the hunting-pard; her desperation but amuses him. "Be my guest," he purrs, thrusting so suddenly that she yelps. "There. That's all the thrusting I am good for tonight, my love; if you want more, I'm afraid you are going to have to do the rest. I--ah!"

She laughs, having interrupted his sentence with a clench. "You say that, now," she says playfully, rolling her hips and squeezing him again, adoring the length and hardness of his sex, its contours against the surfaces of her own. She luxuriates in being able to take him like this, using him for her own pleasure like this, knowing how much he adores it, too. She drinks in his sensations just as he drinks in hers: the way his sack leaps and the way his prick spurts out sap as he is massaged by her cunny, he sliding against its pomegranate walls, her honey flowing down her candied-rose-petal folds--oh, but she has to laugh at the culinary metaphors.

 _Says the woman who just thought of me as a dildo,_ he cackles into her mind. _Wood or leather, I wonder?_

She squeezes experimentally, pretending to think. "Quicksilver," she hisses, rolling her hips down onto him, his desire truly having the characteristics of mercury, that metal beloved of all sorcerers and alchemists; liquid one moment, firm the next, making whosoever comes in contact with it swoon with its power.

"As a matter of fact," he chuckles out loud, "that reminds me of a dream I had the other night."

"Do tell," she mumbles absent-mindedly, now taking her hand to her clitoris and rubbing herself as she takes him; as much as she loves to linger, her desperation is true and demands satiation now, now, now.

"Well, I found you with Sarosh," he whispers against her throat, loving the way her entire body shivers and clenches around him as he drags his teeth against her neck; "you naughty little minx. You had gone off to masturbate with him, without telling me."

She bites her lip and closes her eyes, quickening her pace a little. "Perhaps I did?" she says coquettishly. Besides, it would not be the first time one of them, while sleeping, had felt what the other was doing at the time.

" _God,_ I hope so," he groans against her shoulder, filthily, obnoxiously; she may have meant her words as a tease, but she also knows just how much he adores her playing the wanton, his cock leaping inside of her at the very thought. "You were so heated your cunny left a wet streak upon his belly as you straddled him," he pants and cannot help thrusting back; "a little like this, but on your back atop him. Legs open wide--ah--"

"Mmm-hmm?" she says, her mouth smacking open, ripples of pleasure now making her body tense and relax around him over and over, her buttocks touching his hips and parting from them again like quick little waves lapping at a beach. "Go on."

"You were desperate to be fucked in the _arse,_ " he growls, taking his thumb to her anus, pressing there, adoring the way it purses against his thumb as if afraid of being taken, her inner muscles pulling upon his cock. "And he fucked you there," he pants, pressing, rubbing; "fucked you so hard and I saw it, saw it," and now, he cannot keep up the pretense of disinterest any longer and begins to move fully with her upon the bed, awrithe.

 _I saw you from the front, my sweet; saw that pretty little cunny of yours swollen, glistening, dripping, pouring down his sack as he took you and took you,_ he moans into her mind, now too out of breath for so many words: instead, he displays to her the images, vivid and golden in his mind.

The silver of Sarosh slithering underneath her with eerie precision, the alabaster glow of her skin, the marzipan plumpness of her flesh, the shocking red flush of her cunny and the droplets of sap dangling off its swollen folds; even the opening of her sex fluttering with her convulsions as Sarosh's silvern prick plows into her arse at an inhuman speed. Her face twisted, contorted in pleasure like a grotesque old pagan mask; her nipples--now the colour of cherries--pointing high, high, high. Her belly dipping and rippling as she is held still by Sarosh, held captive by his multiple arms: his silver fingers dug deep into the hollows of her hips, in those very spots that Jaffar himself presses his fingers into now, causing her to howl into the pillows.

Hands, hands; the Sarosh of his dream has as many hands as there are possible caresses, as many as there are ways in which to claim her: one pair holding open her legs, another pulling her head back by the hair, another clawing and squeezing and slapping at her breasts as she balances there, helpless.

And just as Yassamin aches, now, thinking of her untouched clitoris, of how much being taken like this must hurt, Jaffar himself steps into the vision. _Yes. I couldn't very well leave your pretty little cunny like that,_ his croon slithers down her ear, sparking into her chest, sharpening her nipples; upon the bed, he now flips her onto her belly and slips his hand against her cunny, letting her ride against the heel of his hand as he takes her from behind. Her favourite position, his; "I had to taste it, had to," he groans out loud, keens as he begins to thrust and thrust properly, now. _And there, you guided me, too, my love; guided me just as if I were a doll, like I am now. A slave to your love, a slave,_ he moans and shows to her how in his vision, her eyes roll back as he takes her clitoris into his mouth and _sucks._

 _Just how you like me to suck it,_ he lisps into her mind, that disgusting, effeminate, mocking lisp that she loves, hates, loves; greedily, he soaks his consciousness into her body fully so that he can drink of her pleasure once more. Every suck, every gush, every spray of her pleasure a fountain of sugar down his chin, honey dribbling down his jaw onto his neck and glistening stickily upon his chest; her clitoris trapped underneath his front teeth, he sucking upon it so hard she weeps.

And she weeps without tears, now, spasming underneath him, violently in her fatigue, all of her muscles burning; he burns, too, so close to cramping but he is damned if he is going to stop, now. He lets her waves, her mind pull his hips towards her in her own pleasure's rhythm; lets her consciousness manipulate him completely, shocked himself at the hardness and the fury of the thrusts she now forces him into performing, his body crashing down onto her and into her over and over.

Instead of a soft and tender rain, it is the thunderbolt that she yearns for: to be blown senseless, to have her entire body shocked, shaken up until she resembles a woman seized; a desire terrible, yet he hasn't the heart to disobey her. She shrieks so loudly that she hurts his ear, but oh, the way her womb presses and spasms against his prick when she does so, only the tremors of a high scream allowing the deepestmost surfaces of her sex to finally touch his; only the waves of a low groan vibrating her flesh so that she can squeeze out its fullest, profoundestmost pleasure from hidden nerves that ordinarily remain beyond his reach. Nothing less will do, her flesh swallowing his in a frenzy of animal cries, groans, screams, ruts: a woman desperate, she beats herself upwards into him and onto their joined hands, all of her unravelling onto his flesh, pierced by it and pressed by it, and for a moment he fears she truly will dissolve, fall apart, become ground into but atoms betwixt his prick and his hand.

It's only when he can feel her waves ebbing that he can allow himself to fall upon her for the last time, to let go of his own shock of white: one final lightning flashes through his spine, flashes outside the room, illumining it as he pours himself into her, libates the last of his strength into her, surging into her from his very marrow until his teeth are chattering, his body shivering cold, all gooseflesh and tremors, his ears whistling, his eyes blind. She is trembling, too, cold with over-exertion's nausea; they are both cold and clammy from their fatigue, dimly terrified of the force of their own passion. Will they slay each other this way one day? Yet they remain clinging to one another, their love the only thing that seems real in this unreal state of consciousness, exhaustion having turned them inside out.

It is later, much later that they find themselves curled up underneath the quilt once more, a cup of herbal tea somehow having materialised between their hands: green and sweet with honey, rich with milk and butter, they pass it from hand to hand, mouth to mouth. Neither asks where it had come from: perhaps Zahra has learned to send them cupfuls by now, or perhaps it is the children--but neither wishes to linger upon the thought of their children watching them mid-rut, so they but accept the tea as fact and let it weave its warmth into their limbs once more.

 _I am glad you are alive, here, and mine,_ Yassamin-Jaffar sighs as they set down the cup, already half asleep, their hair mingling so that it forms but one dark halo around their heads upon the white pillows, streaks of sunset's light stealing through the window-panels to paint ribands of purple and pink upon their cheeks. _I love you,_ a quiet whisper flits from mind to mind upon yawns; _I love you, my love--good night--_

"Rrrr-iuk?"

Yassamin pretends to be asleep, or perhaps she is; Jaffar creaks open one eyelid to meet a pair of sad, yellow eyes gazing at them from the foot of the bed.

 _Come on, then,_ he thinks at Ishtiaq, patting the bed between himself and Yassamin. _We might as well._

As Ishtiaq jumps in, Jaffar lifts up the quilt to welcome him underneath it, too, so that he can curl up between them. Yassamin is going to grumble about the paw-prints upon the sheets tomorrow, but never mind.

With the last of his strength, Jaffar whispers a rune and with it, tugs open one of the window-panels to let in the sunset's light: so much like that night Salsabil and Anwar had been conceived. And look at him and Yassamin, now: sheltering another little life with their bodies, purring happily between them.

Not to mention his whole family having sheltered all of Samarkand for the past few months; in comparison to having the souls of hundreds of thousands of people upon their consciences, what's one pard? Jaffar muses as he closes his eyes and wraps his arm around Ishtiaq.

And it is upon Ishtiaq's deep, rumbling purrs and the scent of the rain-soaked earth that their dreams take flight: over the once-more restful fields of the Sogd, they glide peacefully into the night.

***

END

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Some notes on the queen-fabric:
> 
> According to Masudi in The Meadows of Gold (the Lunde/Stone translation), the "varicoloured silk" was introduced or popularised at court by Zubayda (although some sources say Khayzuran) and the fabric itself was called "Washi." A single length of which, designed for Zubayda, cost 50 000 dinars. ( [Here's a page on Abbasid textiles.](http://www.abbasidstudies.org/?page_id=580) )
> 
> Depending on the source/period, there were about 15-20 silver dirhams to 1 dinar around the late 700s/early 800s (where the Roses saga is set.) According to [some estimates,](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235761489_A_Brief_History_of_Money_in_Islam_and_Estimating_the_Value_of_Dirham_and_Dinar) one gold dinar is about 46 USD in 2018. According to that and presuming that one dinar was 15 dirhams, one dirham is 3 dollars. A medium quality and cheap shirt cost 8 and 4 dirhams, respectively. So a good shirt would be 24 bucks and a bad shirt would be 12 bucks. 
> 
> Yet, another source (Hugh Kennedy's “When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World”) says: “An ordinary labourer might get one twelfth of a dirham a day, the foreman twice that. This does not sound very much until we read that a sheep cost a dirham, a lamb a quarter of a dirham. A dirham would buy 30 kilos of dates or 8 litres of oil.”
> 
> So we have to estimate on the basis of that. Using the "dinar is 46 bucks in 2018" method of calculation and adjustment for inflation, we get the stupendous price of _2 300 000_ USD (about 2 million Euros) in 2018 for one suit of queen-fabric.

**Author's Note:**

> Freely rebloggable promo post for the fic [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/174520045853/fic-the-guardians-of-samarkand-jaffarprincess)


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